The Lost Decade
by Pernshinigami
Summary: Torch/GK, continued from "Distress Call" Torchwood gets a shinigami visitor from the Seireitei, and that visitors' friends come from their own dimensions to play. Other gatekeepers lend chaos to the mix, and Jack plays matchmaker with Martha and Sakura...
1. Chapter 1

A few words before I begin. Okay a lot of words but there's a process behind this. Part one was Distress Call, which is under Doctor Who. This is Part 2, the lost decade, which presents an altered Torchwood Series 2 timeline and begins sometime after the Reset/Dead Man/Day in the Death three parter.

Okay, this fic is part of a massive anime/manga/scifi crossover that I've been working on for about 3 years privately. The series was a collaborative effort between myself and my online friends ZP and Lucas. Mainly we did it as RP's. So I'm sticking my neckout putting it up here. And I feel really, really bad that an already long fanfic needs a glossery/character guide, but here it goes.

Gatekeepers is something along the lines of an anime/scifi Kingdom Hearts. When it was in its infancy I used 'little' universes, shows like Ben 10 or Avatar that were fun, but lacked intensity and drama. As it developed I decided to stick mainly to anime and sci fi, and haven't gone back to the 'kiddy' set since. I've basically just altered the prologue and added a recap of Distress Call.

And to save confusion, there are two Gwens in this story. Gwen Cooper=Torchwood Gwen, but the main character, Sakura, used to use Gwen Waverider as her alias. There are some jokes about this, Sakura remarking that Gwen is a brilliant name, all Gwens are brilliant and they all think alike.

My pathetic attempts at a prologue/preface.

* * *

Ages and ages and ages ago, about the time of the last ice age, Earth wasn't just inhabited by humans, it was inhabited by Gods. These gods thrived, maintaining both the balence of peace and the balence of reality. And they were teaching and guiding humanity through its early development. The gods were unique. In a manner similar to the Timelords regenration they were constantly being reincarnated as babies when they died, but maintained all their memories of prior lives. A part of their soul called a power core made this possible.

Unfortunately one day, a long long time ago, the Gods and Goddesses began to die. Nobody was sure why, but the sickness caused their power core to degrade. If something wasn't done, then reality would collapse because its guardians were not present to maintain its balence. Something had to be done or the whole of creation would die.

It was a goddess of music, not some impressive and charismatic god of medicine or goddess of death. No, it was Benten of Japanese myth that discovered the solution. Death.

If there were no more Gods or Goddesses to pass on their genetic material, the powercores would simply enter the most compatible mortal host and become mortals. Humans. The race would die, but their power would not. But before an entire race committed harikiri steps had to be done. They needed a skeleton crew of gods and goddesses to monitor the transfer, and they needed people able to watch over the transfer once the last of the gods were gone.

Four races were created almost entirely from scratch, each given power over a single element. Death, space, mind and Time. Yes, the Timelords were one of these. Originally meant to be servents of the gods, the first Timelords were lead by Omega, and began to care for the new generation of gods and monitor the transfer.

But before Benten and her remaining crew began their transfer a problem arose, without certain gods and goddesses around, the fabric of reality would collapse faster than the transfer could be made. They realized their mistake after trying to transfer the Four Sacred Beasts. A dragon with control over water, a tiger with control over air, a phoenix with power over fire and a turtle with power over earth. These four made the laws of physics work, and the mistake nearly cost the lives of both Benten's skeleton crew and the members of the Four Races working with them.

The immediate reaction was to plant their power cores in a mortal immediately. No reincarnation in between. Each of the four races sacrificed one member to the Sacred Beasts, the Timelords sent Rassilon, one of their brightest minds, to sacrifice to Seiryuu, the dragon of wisdom with complete control over water. The relationship between beast spirit and timelord was a symbiotic one, and the Gatekeepers worked out a system for future "Celestial Dragons" as the hosts of these beasts came to be called. The spirits would change hosts every 100 years, with no preference shown for species. The skeleton crew dissolved from creation, becoming one with the fabric of space and time. By giving up their corporeal forms, they could no longer physically affect the mortal worlds. The legacy was left to the gatekeepers and first races for protection.

There is nothing more potent than a Timelord with an idea. And Rassilon was not content to be a servent of the gatekeepers forever. He made a bargain with Benten, if he could find a way to protect the Gods and Goddesses and the gatekeepers themselves, without the First Races around, the Timelords and the other three races would have their freedom. Century after century and finally Shield Station arose, the first stationary base and the last line of defense against an enemy invasion. Clever as every legend told him to be, Rassilon set Shield Station in a Pocket Dimension, and scattered other pocket dimensions for the gods and goddesses to inhabit. A wormhole lead into the pocket dimension, and a second wormhole lead into the realm of the gods and goddesses. At random increments of time, the location of the entry wormhole would change at random. But unpredictability was not the only defense. On shield station most forms of telepathy were dampened, the shields were heavily strengthened, the outer hull plated with the heaviest armor that could be found. Rather than excessively add weapons stations, the gods and goddesses themselves could attack or defend the station. And certain gatekeepers with a talent for telepathic control of machines could take control of the weapons systems and defend the station with a flick of the hand and a special harness. The ancient technician focusing more on endurance than offensive power, decided that wisely placed resources, endurance and unpredictability would set the tone of tactics used by subsequent generations of the burgeoning ranks of gatekeepers. Seiryuu absorbed all the knowledge he could from the most powerful of Timelords before he changed hands, the wealth of information making him ringleader of the other four spirits.

Rassilon's work done, the Timelords withdrew to Galifrey and over subesquent generations of their species, knowledge of their former slavery to the gods was lost. Civilization began to develop as it should, all over the multiverse. Many earths, many worlds, many lives and generations passed until the year 2000. A team of four gatekeepers began to gather strength. Nicknamed the Suicide Squad for the difficulty of their missions and the burial of their former identities, Delphine Sterns, ZP, Feralae Wildeye, and Lucas Fullmoon gathered strength.

But their strength waned when Feralae disappeared and Delphine was named to the rank of Guardians who stood at the Gates of Time, never leaving, meant to guard the timestream wherever there was an opening. The timelords were preoccupied with the Dahleks, and none of them had guarded the Gateway for centuries. ZP had loved Feralae with all her heart, and with her koibito presumed dead, she locked herself in her laboratory to experiment and fell into great grief and depression. With his comrades gone, Lucas, being a kitsune spirit, faded away into the wilds of undiscovered lands.

A new generation of gatekeepers entered basic training late in the year 2004. Katry was an Inu tai-yokai of a species known as Hellhounds. Kailai was a seventeen year old daughter of two gatekeepers, one Texan, one native to her home city of Atlanta, and who was almost too old to be considered for apprenticeship. Jazra was a puerto rican bombshell from New England with an aggression problem and a massive extended family.

Gwen Waverider was the fourth, a schoolfriend of Jazra's and a very sickly girl at the start, her left arm was so weak that she could barely lift a sword. The brace meant to stabilize her arm fed painkillers directly into her body and used a specially formulated anesthetic directly into the nerve. Both functions done by nanites.

But the brace was a very very frail thing, frought with programming errors and shoddy workmanship. And very much like Jazra, Gwen had issues with aggression. Delphine had gone MIA to try and escape her duties, and Gwen and her sensei were sent to find her. Her first battle, the person she was fighting had been approached by Delphine for help, and had mocked her and Gwen's concern in Delphine's welfare. Because of the mockery, Gwen flew into a rage and was hit with a lightning technique at point blank. Her hair was permanently singed black, her eyes faded from vivid green to pale jade with the pupils almost invisible. Her brace was fused to her arm, and her nervous system.

Creative by nature, Gwen discovered something interesting, the newly fused brace could control, break, or scan computer systems, just by thinking what she wanted it to do. The ability was limited, but deserved more training. And her powers were growing, indeed they skyrocketed when she became the new Host for Seiryuu.

Several months later and more confident in her abilities, Gwen picked a fight with a bigger cybernetic fish. The nanites in the brace were corrupted, crystalizing her arm into living metal. She should have, and would have died then if ZP had not been called, along with Major Motoko Kusanagi of Section 9, to fix the problem. Her left arm was fully cybernetic, and ZP was placed in charge of her training. Major Kusanagi accidentally uncovered an interesting piece of information. Gwen's father Takato had been one of the first members of section 9, and adopted son of Daisuke Aramaki, its leader. Now deceased, Gwen wanted desperately to trace her father's lineage.

Over the next couple of years, Gwen pursued the missing Delphine and underwent basic training with her fellow Celestial Dragons, Jazra to Byakko the jade tiger, Katry to Suzaku the black phoenix, and Kailai to Genbu the stone turtle. Her control over computers was effortless, childsplay, instinct. She controlled water as naturally as she breathed, able to slay an opponent by the snap of a finger and exploding their bodies from the inside. Her spiritual energy skyrocketed and her control over it became effortless.

Delphine returned, just in time to help with the creation of a new Gatekeeper Base located in the Grand Canyon. The Earth of the dimension they were in repeatedly experienced incidents of both the supernatural and the extraterrestrial. A few extra incidents of the paranormal would not be noticed. But Gwen got her heart broken. She'd fallen in love with Delphine. Seiryuu was a passionate creature to have in your soul, known for loving with all his might and for being fiercely prideful and protective, and as Celestial Dragons typically do, he created a telepathic bond between Gwen and Delphine. Further, celestial dragons could breed with anything, even normally incompatible species, even the same gender, hellfire, the person's body didn't even have to be organic as long as their original spiritual pressure was intact. Gwen concieved a child with Delphine on the same eve that Delphine was sent on a mission, and the artifact Delphine was sent to retrieve caused a split. There was an evil Delphine, named Dexelphine or Dex looked which looked identical to Del. Delphine was reduced to a sickly and underfed child, and would die in a few years if she was not reunited with her darkside.

Unaware of the change, Gwen was unable to tell the difference between Del and Dex. Dex posed as Delphine, and at just the right moment she raped Gwen. The attack was violent, and resulted in Gwen losing the baby. Even after they were reunited, Delphine was unable to look Gwen in the eye. She had absorbed the memory of what Dex did along with the rest of her darkside. It was the end of any hope the two might have had of a relationship.

And Gwen was about to meet destiny. At long last she was allowed to meet her grandfather, Daisuke Aramaki, and fight alongside Section 9 just the way her father had. But something went wrong, and an evil AI locked away by Aramaki ages before broke free of its seal inside the Net. Known as the Shadow Hacker, it planned to spread a computer virus through the minds of all the technopaths serving the gatekeepers. If this happened, the art of technopathy would become extinct. True technopaths were rare, a delicate and valuable comodity for an organization accustomed to swords, magic and other relics of a bygone era. In the struggle Gwen activated a long dormant Gatekeeper ability that allowed her to change to a species that she'd been in a former reincarnation. There were many that could have been pulled, including the Crusnik of Trinity Vatican, the Timelords of legend, and other species long extinct, but it was the power of shinigami that she drew. She had become a Shiketsu, a pureblood shinigami of the species known and made famous in the anime Bleach.

She grabbed the attention of commander general Yamamoto Genryuusai, and when her talent became clear he began to plan for how to bring Gwen into the ranks of the Gotei 13 captains. Gwen's search for her father's origins lead her to Aizen, and the horrible experiment that Aizen was running turned the souls of deceased children into Arrancar. The shinigami were outraged, and the Gatekeeper's reaction was swift. Aizen was one of their numbers and experimenting on children incurred violent consequences.

Aizen was "world shackled," restrained. He lost the ability to travel between worlds and in the three day siege that followed soon after most of his empire crumbled. Yamamoto set a trap for Gwen. Sending 200 members each of the 3rd, 9th and 5th divisions into the battle, he hoped to procure a new captain by rite of blood, an honor taken only by 11th captain Kenpachi Zaraki. The Celestial dragon did far better than Yamamoto had hoped, slaying 9th Espada Aeroneiro Arleri, fighting 6th Espada Grimmjow Jaegerjaques to a draw and finally entering into battle with Kaneme Tousen, former captain of the 9th division. Gwen was the reincarnation of Tousen's older sister, who had willed Suzumushi to him upon her death. Because of this, she was able to break Tousen's bankai. A victim of her own strength, Gwen mortally wounded Tousen. It took two weeks for the former captain to die, during which time Yamamoto temporarily reinstated his rank, giving the dying captain voting power as to a successor. Gwen was named 9th division captain in waiting, without her knowledge, but could only become a captain when she died and became a full fledged shinigami.

And Gwen fell in love again, marrying both ZP and Motoko and telepathically bonding with them both. She soon had a daughter and a son. Her wish for a family was granted, and her attachment to ZP and Major became deep.

At the same time, signs of a traitor among the gatekeepers began to rise. The evidence piled up but with no one to interpret it. Benten desperately wanted Ryuuzaki, the greatest detective ever to live and made famous by the anime Deathnote to join their side. But with Kira on the rampage, and out for Ryuuzaki's blood, the gatekeepers would have to fake Ryuuzaki's death in order to save him. Removing L, Watari and Rem was Gwen's job, and she was given the rank of 13th division lieutenant, a rank she held for the remainder of her mortal life. Complicating the proceedure, Light and Misa both, Arrancar and Espada of centuries future, were thrown back in time. Arrancar Light wanted nothing more than to undo what he'd done and live a happy life with Ryuuzaki. But the damage he had done as Kira was so severe that the "Kira Years" had become a fixed event in time. He could do nothing.

A wise timelord would tell you that there's a difference between historical destiny and personal destiny. Arrancar Light took his personal destiny in hand, and as one of that rare 3 percent of male arrancar who could bear children, he purposefully got pregnant from Ryuuzaki and then relocated to Konohagakure and Tsunade's medical care. It was there that his and Ryuuzaki's descendants eventually became a ninja clan of their own. And when Gwen saved and returned Ryuuzaki to his beloved Light Yagami, she became aware of a problem of her own.

ZP was ailing. Several times in her life she had become dangerously ill and after a near fatal wound sustained in a civil war on her world, ZP was both blind, lame and worse, declining in health. Major's missions were getting more and more dangerous. As a young woman pregnant with her first child, newly minted months and months ago as a shinigami, forced into confinement as her preganncy neared its end, she had dreamed of everything she was and would be, from birth to death. No human can handle that kind of burden, and most shinigami cannot either. As it was the events forseen had been reduced to symbols, flashes of light and sound, voice and a headlong plunge through her Zanpakuto's inner world. The doctor would later refer to the vision as a curse passed through the generations of Celestial dragons from Seiryuu's time bonded to Rassilon, indeed divining spells always came easily to the shinigami. In that same dream she had dreamed of her loss of ZP and Major.

The enemy, Ivan, showed his face and war broke out. Gwen had many children with ZP and Major, looked after by her father's spirit, the lost bloodrelative now also a shinigami. Aizen's empire fell and shortly after ZP was forced to sacrifice herself for her people. Major was slain in the line of duty leaving Gwen both depressed and suicidal. These were not a good combination, especially when combined with Gwen's hairtrigger temper. Ivan, the enemy and traitor, was captured and executed. His bases were in ruins, his followers scattered. Gwen had little else to live for now, her job was done, she could fall into the monotony of peace time and grow old and die. Her sense of duty did not permit her to commit suicide, and she was terrified of taking her destined place among the shinigami captains.

One last evil of Aizen's reign returned, previously incapacitated and in a coma for years, Szayel awoke to discover Aizen's empire gone. Instead he sought to ressurect the dead shinigami to rise again. He was certain that Ivan's ruined facilities held the answer. When word reached Gwen of Szayel's attempts to return Aizan to life, she chased him down with a serious case of what Policemen refer to as 'tunnel vision.' While she slew Szayel, Gwen sacrificed her life to do so. Her dead spirit returned to Soul Society and stayed there for hundreds of years.

An abridged and heavily edited version of Gwen's adventures, minus the gatekeeper parts, had made its way into the archives of the Timelords vast store of knowledge. And 500 years later Gwen was bored and grieved. She returned to her birth name of Sakura, embraced her role of captain of the gotei 13, and out of despair she had been the cause of so much change in the Soul Society that she and her descendants had risen to the status of nobility. her friends had all passed into the soul society with her, and were restless in their 'retirement.'

Delphine was immortal, and growing bored at her vigil over the Gates of Time. There was only one gate guardian left besides her, and they both had loved ones in the mortal realm waiting for them. Sakura's loyalty to Delphine had remained unwavering since her childhood, and so one night Delphine used her gift of foresight to tell Sakura a secret. "You are in no way obligated to take a task normally handled by your subordinates, but if you take the evening patrol you will discover somebody very important. Bring him to your compound as a guest of your clan."

The world Sakura had grown up in was the same as ours, with the ordinary television series about the Doctor and his companions, about Torchwood and their charismatic leader Jack Harkness. The sound of the Tardis' appearance took her a few minutes to recognize, as it came back cutting through centuries and centuries of irritation and despair and misery. The excited reception of the Doctor in Soul Society raised a great stir, and Sakura carefully blessed and sealed a space in the family shrine for Doctor to park the Tardis in. While it rested in that space it could not be stolen, it would remain there until the Doctor left once more. "Can't have Captain Kurotsuchi poking his nose where it doesn't belong. He'd strip the Tardis up for scrap and leave behind the bones."

For the next several days Doctor followed Sakura around her duties as a shinigami captain. Then Delphine requested his assistance, and would the Doctor take turns guarding the timestream with herself and her relief guard, Setsuna? Just as Sakura had so many years ago Doctor valued his freedom. Why should he stand guard over the flow of time for all eternity? He had worlds to see, companions to travel with, even recovering his grief over losing Donna he refused to give up his freedom.

Sakura made a proposal, "How are your companions doing these days Doctor? I heard Rose was getting restless over being trapped. Martha has become a soldier and siezed her own destiny. Jack is glued to his team. Sarah Jane is getting old. And Donna, well, how's she doing? I'll make a bargain with you Doctor. If you will help Delphine, then I will travel with you for a year. I am not so easily trapped, coerced, or injured, and I am 400 years younger than you. Age is no difficulty. I am very strong, after my year is up I will be proud and honored to become a yojimbo, a bodyguard to you and subsequent companions. What do you say Doctor? I'm getting /bored/ in retirement."

Doctor accepted Sakura's proposal, and began to familiarize himself with the Soul Society and its inhabitants. It was, maybe 48 hours later that the shuttle crashed through the dimensional barrier, leaving Jenny with a concussion and several broken bones. The young Timelord had done the impossible, discovered the spacial entrance to the pocket dimension containing shield station. The Gatekeeper God of Time Chronos needed an earthly emissary, it had been a long time since he'd seen a new timelord and out of concern for the protection of the station he had attacked her shuttle and opened a portal to soul society for it to crash through. She was taken immediately to the 4th division for emergency treatment, and Sakura celebrated the reunion between Timelords. But one more duty remained for the day. New graduates from the shinigami academy were now deciding what division to enter. Among them the restless souls of one Rose Tyler and one Martha Jones.

The tradition was for shinigami captains and their lieutenants to give a speech and a display of their abilities. Sakura had taken Ichigo Kurosaki as her lieutenant, and between them a fireworks display wowed the crowd. Normally a speech about honor and duty and hard work would have sufficed. But the Doctor planted a spark in her that day and something Sakura said caught the attention of one blonde ex companion in the crowd, her speech being about the will to defend, and the love of home, of world and of loved ones that becomes the true strength of a shinigami in battle.

Then too, the Doctor was watching from the edge of the stage, /almost/ hidden. Not enough for Rose though! When the display concluded the former companion tried desperately to reach Doctor. But crowds have a funny way of seperating people. Still her mind was made up, Rose choose the 9th division as hers.

The next day they were planning a welcome party for the new members of 9th division. Ichigo and Karin were finished preparing the courtyard for the bash. Sakura was running late, she'd stayed up most of the night drinking with Kyouraku and Doctor and did not have the same alcohol tolerance as the older captain or timelord, who were much much older than her. And then Grimmjow had come to visit and they'd had such a lovely time back in the shinigami captain's suite, and the combination of alcohol and sex ensured that the 9th Captain was late! Late!

But one more figment from Doctor's past had a bone to pick. Sakura had a standing tradition that if a new graduate could beat her in a shikai only sparring match, they could have one thing that was in Sakura's power to give. Martha intended on making use of that tradition. Hungover and still hyped up on hormones from an all nighter with Grimmjow Sakura was mortified, amused and excited when the former Companion named her prize, a kiss from the legendary 9th Captain Sakura Ryuunami.

The former companion not only won, but turned a kiss into a makeout session in broad daylight before tailing Sakura (who by now was only thinking of her escape,) to the party. Doctor, Rose and Martha were reunited. Martha was in the 4th division, named to the 5th position. Sakura decided that a companion in her division had already proven her strength and was proud to name Rose her 4th seat.

Previously in Distress Call.......

'Gatekeepers, interdimensional keepers of the peace. They've been around since the beginning of human civilization, their adventures spawning myths on six continents spanning the barest stirrings of human civilization to the present. Not just in the world I came from, but everywhere, every dimension, every world. No part of existance hasn't been touched by them in some way.

Aizen has sent an attackforce to Cardiff to slaughter Torchwood. The attack had been discovered by Donna 500 years forward in time from the present day, who had been transformed into a Timelord after the Doctor's seal broke. On her lonesome and cooped up in shield station for five centuries, she has had little chance to exercise the innate talents the Doctor takes for granted. The attack was discovered on a scan of the timeline, after she endured repeated nightmares and flashes of precognition. With Urahara's help, she wrote a riddle to lure Doctor and Sakura, shinigami captain for division 9, up to Shield Station and ask them for help.

Elsewhere Rose and Martha's restless spirits had been konso'd to the soul society, both of them having newly graduated from the Shinigami Academy. Martha placed a special request to be posted to the 4th Division's staff and recieved their 4th seat position, and Rose asked Yoruichi for advanced training in Shunko, a dangerous shinigami technique that could be fatal if it backfired. Sakura instilled Rose as her 4th seat as well, after the newly graduated shinigami asked to join her division. Martha also took advantage of a challenge Sakura routinely issues to new shinigami graduates, defeat her in a shikai only battle and be granted one wish in her power to grasp. The former companion used her victory to hit on the shinigami Captain, and was disappointed when Sakura turned her down.

Sakura and Doctor decided that Donna's riddle was too good not to try and solve, the reunion being heartfelt and tearful. "I've been stuck here for 500 years, they wouldn't let me go anywhere or see anybody! It was boring and lonely and I kept screaming for you to come back and you never did!!!!" Donna sobbed. "I called and called and you didn't even hear me......."

Meanwhile, in the Soul Society, Jenny awoke in the 4th Division and upon learning that her shuttle had been impounded for repairs had gone in search of Sakura, only to be intercepted by adult versions of the Naruto World's Team 7. Sakura, Sasuke and Naruto showed her how to use the Red Chain, a relic given the Doctor by the Gatekeepers, to summon the sacred pokemon Dialga. They made a special request, bring their past selves to the Cardiff invasion to fight.

Over the 48 hours before the attack fellow gatekeepers began to converge on Cardiff to assist Torchwood in repelling Aizen's strike force, consisting of a hollow swarm, several adjuchas, Gin, and Espada Grimmjow and Stark. But Jack's team was taken out quite early in the fight. The doctor came with Martha and Orihime Inoue to heal their wounds, but became the target of Gin's wrath himself. He was rescued by a combination of Jenny, Team 7, Lelouche, and Yoruichi. However, the team of gatekeepers was not strong enough to protect both Torchwood and the Doctor. Shinigami Rose was enroute, but might not be able to cross the timegap fast enough to save the Doctor.

Then Donna, Timelord Donna, appeared. She had snuck out of the gatekeeper Space Station using a Time Flute and the assistance of the Sacred Pokemon Summons Celebi. Heedless of consequence, she used the technique "Chidori 1,000 birds" which causes tunnel vision when used by anyone other than an Uchiha. As a result Stark was able to blindside her. The severity of Donna's injuries resulted in her regenerating, and her chakra was completely drained.

Just as Gin was about to slaughter the Doctor and his companions, Shinigami Rose appeared. Coming to the rescue Rose released her zanpakuto, Kokebara Yuretsu (lit. Portulaca Valor), causing enough devastation that Gin and his forces were forced to retreat, however enough of them escaped to become a danger to the Whoverse.

As the members of Torchwood rested and recovered their strength, the word came in from the gatekeeper superiors. Sakura was to remain in Torchwood for ten years, an order she was extremely reluctant to obey. However, Jack and Martha welcomed her to their world with open arms.


	2. A new face

"Hahaaaaa! Sakura what do you think?" Urahara fanned himself, pointing to the gigai he'd built for her. "Dark brown hair, grey eyes, nondescript."

"And glasses."

"So? Didn't Ryuuzaki-kun constantly maintain that you needed glasses? And look, you've got a tattoooooo!" Urahara had Ririn turn and pulled up her left sleeve. "What do you think?"

"That's the Timelord council's insignia." Sakura eyed it. "I checked the local heraldry. And you melded it with the ANBU black opps tattoo? Are you sure you're not trying to get me shot at? I'm surprised you haven't been struck by lightning!"

"It stands for anything you want it to. Why yes....." Urahara fanned his smirk. "I want to make plain who your allies are."

"Are you trying to make me look like Doctor? Those are the same glasses." Sakura added, "though I don't mind the short hair. But they say blondes have more fun! I would have wanted to be blonde."

"No they aren't, they're blue. They're from Vogue, very stylish. And the lenses are polarized." Jack started laughing. Doctor was watching the proceedings with a smirk on his face. "Don't they look stylish Jack?"

"Oh yeah, very sophisticated." Jack agreed, eyeing the gigai Ririn had brought. The modsoul giggled. "Very cute." (and from Ririn: "Why thank you handsome.")

"Why'd you put that tattoo there?" Doctor interjected.

"If your people find her, and I have no doubt that there are survivors out there somewhere. If Master and Rani escaped,(1) then obviously there are more survivors out there." Urahara chuckled. "Then too I also want to catch their interest. Also, Sakura's left arm was once robotic, so placing it on her left side just makes sense in an Aesthetic way."

"You play with fire too much." Doctor said with a frown. "You're going to get her in trouble."

"I've gotten into and out of trouble without his help before." Sakura sighed. "Okay......." She flicked out Nova's pill, then swallowed. BONG, she was gone from her gigai. "Ririn....... coming through."

"Just don't forget to put me back in my doll!" Ririn warned. "I hate being in limbo! Its scary! My capsule could be crushed so easily!" Sakura pulled out a telltale red, black and blue glove. "Hey guys, ever wonder what its like to be a ghost?" She smirked, holding the glove up. "This'll help you find out damn quick." She grinned, lunging in with the glove. BONG Ririn's pill dropped to the floor. The gigai sagged. "Jack, get it, hold it for me!" Sakura turned the red and black glove on herself. BONG! Sakura's gigai fell to the ground, Owen jumped in to check for vitals on reaction, then realized what he was doing and grinned sheepishly. At the same time, Sakura grabbed the gigai's shoulders and pulled herself into it. "I'm smaller too....." She patted herself down. "This will do I guess......" Then she looked up at Urahara. "Did you have to make my breasts so big?" Indeed, the bustline of Sakura's gigai was about the same size in proportion to Orihime or Matsumoto. "I'll have intergalactic perverts trying to cop a feel!" She whined.

"Trust me....." Urahara used his fan to hide a giggle. "You look better a couple of cups bigger than you......."

Sakura punched Urahara, hard. "PERVERT!"

"OW OW OW!!!" Urahara pouted. "Hey...... you'll thank me."

"Have you been talking to Donna?"

"A couple of times, yeah." Urahara snickered. "Why?"

"Okay, tell my past self when Major and ZP die, NOT to sleep with you. For any reason?" Urahara was on a select 'list' of people that Sakura slept with, and was shameless about it too. Three of her thirty children were his descendants, though she would never tell /him/ that.

"Oooooh, spoilers." Urahara mocked. "But I'm flaaatttered. Truely though, I thought you'd be showing off for Martha, not me." Urahara gave the shinigami a bit of a push towards the former companion, fanning himself mischieviously and batting his eyelashes.

Sakura turned beat red. "I'm standing here you know." Martha said cooly. "She can show off all she wants, it doesn't bother me." Sakura blushed scarlet. There was a beat. "What /has/ Donna been telling you?????" Martha demanded.

"Oh that's what they always say, right Jack?" Urahara snickered. "Besides, Martha-chan, I'm entitled to tease all I want eh? Besides, I can't tell you what Donna said, its uber sekrit timelord stuff." He grinned teasingly at the others. "Alright, put Ririn back in her doll. Nova back in his. Torchwood will hang on to your normal gigai. You still have Nova to help you." Urahara instructed Sakura. "One more thing...." He took a tiny red and white ball out of his pocket and handed it to her.

"What's this?" Sakura asked, pressing the button on the pokeball to release it. "And I mean what?"

"Oh, a familiar that doubles as a rift sensor. I thought you'd find her much cuter than a machine and more aggreeable than a pterodactyl. Though admittedly a guard dog that can fly is very effeciaent with the Hub's structure."

Sakura pushed the button. "Oh my goodness." a tiny blue and black creature popped out, squeaking gleefully. "Riolu. And a cute one at that." Sakura blushed, squealing in a girly fashion.

"What the heck is that thing?" Ianto bent down to take a good look.

"Its a riolu." Sakura beamed. "ooooh, but Tsubame is going to get jealous if I take her home. I guess that means you stay at Torchwood..... cuuuutieee pie. Oooh yes, unless of course Ianto wants to take you home with him."

"Its bizzare." Toshiko watched the creature closely. The Riolu fluttered her ear rattles, then brushed her paws through her head fur cutely. She hopped up and down, testing leg, leg, arm, arm, then crooned.

"No more bizzare than a pterodactyl watchdog." Sakura cackled, the Riolu raised her head, one rattle one way, the other rattle the other.

Rattle rattle, rattle rattle. "Rioooooooo!" the Riolu pounced, clung to Jack's hip and purred.

"Aaaah....." Jack eyed the creature carefully before the Riolu let go and tottered off to look around the hub. Her ears had rattles next to them that shook left or right curiously as she explored. "Why is she......"

"I thought so. Its your 51st century pheromones Jack, that and your altered chakra I suspect. Its a female Riolu, and her species has the ability to sense energy in the area, I'm guessing you have monsters and artifacts elsewhere in the hub that contain rift energy. She's probably reacting to that. Riolu are very sensitive creatures, sometimes even timid. However, they're very much like puppies, they need a little bit of training. But Sakura can take care of that."

"THATS MY PURSE!" Gwen cried as the Riolu dug around in it.

"RIO!" it found a hairpin, a rather pretty looking flower one with a lilly blossom on it, and fastened it to its fur right above its right rattle. "Riolu......" It hopped off elsewhere into the hub.

Urahara giggled, fanning himself. "Don't worry, with a little time to adapt to her environment, Riolu will be an excellent familiar. I guerantee she'll be useful. And I will see you in ten years. Enjoy....... Doctor, head out to do whatever it is you do."

"You're not the boss, but go ahead." Doctor sighed. "You have plans dont' you?" He watched as Riolu hopped around the main control room of the Hub, poking her nose here and there and rattling.

"Oh always....." Urahara chuckled. "We are kindred spirits doctor, people like us, we never have plans, and yet we always do. Sakura, or Mori I should say. We're working on a team for you. Don't worry......" He turned to leave, simply walking out of the door to the Hub, he even sang as he did, his voice fading as Yoruichi and Ririn followed him out. "We'll probably have assignments for you. But you're completing them in as close to a human manner as you can. Jutsu and alchemy are fine, just stay away from Kidou." Sakura listened to the shopkeeper sing, the noise echoing down the corridor after him.

_"I want to change the world,  
Keep on holding on your desire,  
You will get a shining love,  
That you can reach alone If you go on to get your goal,  
It's wonderland._

_"I felt so worried when I spent all the time thinking of the future of us 'Cause I know, there's nothing That I really want to know.  
And then I met you, so I could feel,  
What you should know:  
I've finally found your love,  
And now I'm really feeling all right,  
'Cause the nightmare has gone,  
This is the way to love you."_

"Is he always like that?" Martha asked as they turned away from the door. "Sakura?"

"Yeah, always has been, always will be." Sakura chuckled. "And even after 500 years I remember that song." She snapped her fingers, getting Riolu's attention. "I need a name for you, and you can't go tearing through the hub peeking into everything."

"Pretty words," Toshiko commented.

"Yeah, real pretty. And I used to believe them." Sakura sighed. "But then I learned that Love does /not/ conquer all. It just makes the nightmares easier to endure." She frowned at the pokemon's choice of accessory. "I think Lilly is a good name for you, what do you think Lilly?"

"RIO!" The pokemon agreed, clinging to Jack again and purring.

* * *

Commander General yamamoto was accustomed to firelizards with information from the gatekeepers to be waiting for him. He did not expect to find 2 high ranking Valkire and an unknown seated officer waiting.

The seat fell to one knee. "Forgive me Commander General, I should not have disturbed you." She knelt in the customary position. "I am 9th Division 4th seat Rose Tyler. I came with some news from my captain 9th Division's Sakura Ryuunami."

"I see, you're one of hers. And you two." The two valkire were dressed in the black, white, silver and pale blue uniform of the Snowflake, the Astralgator's personal guard. "Identify yourselves."

"Rei Ironcrow, command officer Snowflake, Crux administration. This is Belili Lillywrath, communications officer for the same." The woman said calmly. "Sakura Ryuunami has been given a mission that has taken her into this timeperiod. But I fear that she may run into some trouble while she's isolated."

"I'm a new graduate. I'm pretty strong, but the enemies here are before my time. Aizen has sent Gin to my home dimension. There's a spacial disturbence there known as "the rift." My friend Jack is captain of the torchwood hub in the vicinity, er.... that's kind of like the divisions, his team is responsible for protecting the area from interdimensional phenomena, but he's not equipped for that kind of thing. Any attempt to open a senkaimon will be detected by his people, they'll probably welcome a shinigami party if you're polite and respect their territory, but there is no record of shinigami from this time entering Torchwood Cardiff. My captain has been assigned by the gatekeepers to guard the boarder between Hueco Mundo and Cardiff, and she's gone under cover with Jack's team."

"Walk with me, 4th Seat Tyler." The blonde nodded to her escort, both officers followed her. "Tell me what Aizen wants with your friends in Torchwood Cardiff."

Rose followed Yamamoto. "We call them the Timelords. For eons they were the guardians of our dimension, they kept time flowing as it should. They had some pretty powerful technology to do it, they had ships meant specifically for traveling the timestream and all the shielding and weaponry to protect themselves and their dimension. But then......" She looked up at the sky, "From what I've been told, creatures we call Dahleks started a war with the Timelords. The battle shook the cosmos, even the very fabric of space and time shuddered. When it ended, the Timelords were no more. There are survivors scattered across space and time, but its our principle defender that Aizen is after.

"We call him the Doctor. He's legendary in our dimension. He always chooses a human companion to travel with him, he appears in his ship, the Tardis, right whenever he's needed. He never carries weapons, just a few basic tools, and yet he's been able to turn back armies, simply by the intelligence and charm behind his tactics. He also..... has a talent for inspiring others to act. If I recall, Lieutenant Kurosaki also has a similar talent, but their personalities are completely different......"

"Aizen wants to capture him?" Yamamoto asked.

"Aizen wants to kill him and steal whatever technology he can capture along the way. Besides him, we have two other groups meant to protect the planet. Torchwood and UNIT. Torchwood operates at hubs in strategic places around the planet. Some are larger, some aren't. Torchwood London was destroyed recently, which technically leaves Jack in charge of Torchwood Operations in the Brittish Isles."

"Would Harkness-taichou object to a discrete shinigami?" Yamamoto asked. "Working in Concert with his division?"

"It depends......" Rose frowned. "Just because there was no record of shinigami involvement doesn't mean that it didn't happen. It just means that there's no record of it. Jack has already met Yoruichi." Rose dug into her robes pocket. "This has data on the situation. Kurotsuchi-taichou should be able to decipher most of it." She handed Yamamoto a USB flashdrive. These were common data and record storing items, because a firelizard could take one in its talons and carry it to where it needed to go.

"I see...... there is no way to track this "Doctor?"" Yamamoto asked. "Protecting him would be easier if we could find him."

"No, unfortunately. If he doesn't want to be found, he won't be. The problem is...... going there is a trade off. Most of the enemies there that Doctor or Jack or any of the other companions deal with are difficult for a shinigami to fight, but at the same time they have difficulty with OUR badguys, like Hollows. Gin tore Jack's team to pieces once...... if Taichou and I hadn't shown up, if Donna hadn't taken steps ahead of time to find reinforcements, they'd be dead. Even if Aizen can't find Doctor, odds are he will find some way to plunder the other HUBS in Search of Alien technology. Please, Jack is my friend, Martha is too. Please find some way to help them........ and no matter what, protect Doctor! Some of the things his people made are so powerful that even he is scared of them."

"I will do my best, please, identify the Doctor's allies for me......" Yamamoto told her. He treated her with all the deference he would a guest.

Rose nodded, pulling out her comm crystal. "Here......" The Torchwood insignia appeared, with a map beneath it. "The original purpose of Torchwood Institute was to capture the doctor, but it soon became clear that the Doctor was a defender, not a threat, and so its purpose eventually evolved to study and protect against the supernatural, specifically alien invasion. They also began collecting alien technology to use in that defense, as well as to advance their dimension's level of technological sophistication. He is not the most high ranking leader among the Hubs, but Captain Jack Harkness' charm, wisdom, and history as a former Companion of the Doctor have given him a lot of influence. Out of the Captains here in the seireitei, you might find captain kyouraku to be the closest match in temprament and amount of respect he garners." A hologram of Jack appeared next to the map.

"The other Torchwood hubs are Paris, Berlin, Rome, vienna, Madrid, Oslo, Moscow, Sydney, Tokyou, Glasgow, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Pretoria, Lisbon, Rio de Janero, Santiago, Mexico City, Kingston, Toronto, Vancouver and Washington DC." The map disappeared.

"Jack's permanent team are Gwen Cooper, police liason, Owen Harper, medical officer, Toshiko Sato, computer and tech specialist, and Ianto Jones, a general support officer. However, other Torchwood officers, some of the Doctor's other companions, and allies at UNIT have been known to come and go. Jack's spitiual pressure is unique, his chain of fate cannot be severed. Short of being eaten by a hollow or his body being completely destroyed, he is immortal." Rose brought up holograms of the other members of Jack's team one by one. "Though his body was later restored to life by Orihime Inoue's Six Flowers technique(2), Owen Harper spent a long period of time where his spirit was housed in a dead body, his dead body. Because of this, he is sensitive to the existance of hollows."

Rose shifted the hologram, a similar map above UNIT's insignia. "I have very little information on UNIT other than a base located in Manhatten and a second base located in China. Unlike Torchwood, whose focus is mainly on scientific advancement, UNIT is mostly concerned with Defense only. And while individual groups will often work together, conflicts concerning jurisdiction aren't uncommon. UNIT also has a former companion among its ranks. Martha Jones, of no relation to Ianto of Torchwood, is head of their medical corps. However, UNIT received over 50 percent casualties in a recent Dahlek invasion, and Martha will very likely leave UNIT soon." A hologram of Martha appeared next to the map before it shifted again.

"Sarah Jane is a former companion as well, however, she is a civilian. In the way Kurosaki Ichigo protects Karakura, she defends her home city of Easling from Alien Invasion. She has apprentices in her Son Luke, and his friends Clyde and Maria, as well as the AI's K-9 and Mister Smith to assist her. The remaining companions have scattered to the four winds, and while we have names and last known wherabouts, we have no other data. (3) There are freelancers scattered across the planet, studying and protecting against supernatural phenomena."

"Enemies you should worry about are in the data stick I gave you. However, nearly all of them are difficult for a shinigami to defeat on his or her own. And some simply should not know of our existance because they would, in turn, forget about targeting the Doctor and shift their focus onto Soul Society." Rose finished her briefing. "Commander general, the situation in my home dimension is far more delicate than in any other. As Torchwood is fond of saying, the 21st century is when everything changes, and we should be prepared. Of course, Jack had no idea how true that was."

"You must return to your home, I take it?" Yamamoto asked. "I am honored to meet one of Sakura's future seats."

"Be good to her sir, the gatekeepers have a saying, when your shield becomes your prison. You do your duty, but at the same time you are completely miserable." Rose said quietly. "It was the same when I disappeared from my home. My shield became my prison."

"Then may you find the home you seek, 9th Division 4th Seat Rose Tyler. If your taichou needs anything from me, please do not hesitate to ask for our assistance." Yamamoto told her as the two parted ways. "Take care....."

"I will, thank you." And the two Snowflake Officers lead her away. Rose kept her head down and her ears cocked for anyone that might spot her where she should not be.

"A peculiar young miss..... a pity, whoever I choose cannot have any connection to Sakura, and yet most of my best officers do." Yamamoto sighed. "This is going to be difficult."

"May I make a suggestion..... old man?" Urahara appeared out of the darkness.

"Kisuke..... I assume the young woman who was just here, is the reason for your visit."

"Well, sort of..... tell me Yamamoto, has Hitsugaya gotten his chuunin sash yet?"

"He has, after the incident with the King's Seal, he recieved his sash with honors."

"Do you think he can handle his first offworld post?"

"With whom?"

"Well they're a bit odd, but Tessai, Hachi, Hiyori and Shinji are all up for a little traveling. I have a place set up in Cardiff. You can send lieutenants and seats in and out as you please."

"I see..... Hitsugaya will be getting a temporary assignment then."

* * *

Urahara took a seat in the safehouse newly opened in Easling. "So..... we have Hitsugaya as team leader for Cardiff House. Orihime needs to go home, but I'd like to place her on reserve, and Lelouche is needed by the black knights." He looked over at Yoruichi and CC for input.

"Edward." Yoruchi said automatically. "Remember that this is a Moderna and Technologica type civilization. Some Magic and jutsu techniques will work, but we need somebody with a scientific ability. And as much as its not acknowledged, Alchemy IS a science."

"Alright..... Hitsu, Edward........."

"What about that remaining bount?" CC asked. "The one named after the famous writer."

"Byron, good idea." Urahara nodded. Byron had escaped Kariya's notice because he tended to keep to himself. This truely made him the last remaining bount. "Alright, Anisette is out of the question. While her Geass is identical to Lelouche's she's not as good at using it, and she's sakura's cousin, and won't react very well to being assigned to this." He hmmmed...... "Raito? I mean Espada Raito, not human Raito. Espada Raito doesn't have a deathnote, and got over being a psychotic mass murderer. Sakura doesn't like him but....."

"Actually, I think she does, she just doesn't admit it. You should add some women in there for balence." Pointed out Yoruichi. "Put Espada on reserve. Besides, Light has a life to live with Ryuuzaki-kun, and Sakura would be angry if we disrupted that. I suggest Arina, she can create a connection to the Pokemon Rangers, and her skills are nicely rounded. She and her blaziken would make a great pair. And I'd suggest......" Yoruichi frowned for a moment. "Remember Aoriya? Wingleader of Circuit Wing at Niihama Weyr? (4) Put her on reserve, she can be on call in case of an emergency and act as messanger and transport for new people in and out of the dimension. Hinata?" Yoruichi suggested. "Hinata or Tenten. Tenten gets very little off world action. And Hinata can get over her shyness quicker. I'd hate to pull Hinata away from Hermione, the two make such a great team and are very devoted to each other, but Hinata isn't as moody as Neji. And Neji knows Sakura too well. Hinata doesn't."

"Tenten is at Wammy's training Near. Hinata's been an exchange keeper in Hermione's world, and truely I think she doesn't quite fit with the witches and wizards there. They've been nice enough to her, but aside from Hermione and the Weasley's she's never been particularly comfortable at Hogwards, even being allowed to teach Jutsu." Yoruichi suggested.

"Hinata is too timid for a post like this, whomever we choose has to be independant, confident, and if need be, forceful." CC insisted.

"I think Hinata is a good choice, actually. She's stronger than she looks, and not every gatekeeper in the strand has to be molded to the image of what you think a good gatekeeper would be." Urahara told CC, a thoughtful grin on his face. "So..... main team, Hitsugaya, Edward, Byron, Arina and Hinata. Reserve members, Orihime Inoue, Aoriya brown Piskerath's and Quinta Espada Raito Yagami."

"Technically he's primeron until he returns home......" CC yawned.

"Technically you're not even a gatekeeper." Yoruichi ground out. CC tried everyone's patience except Lelouche and Kallen. "You're here because we need a psychic to monitor Donna. I'm including you in on this as a courtesy." Then to Urahara. "More estrogen."

"Aaaaah, there we are." Washu entered, a beer from a local brewery in hand. "Sumisu-chan was showing me a new piece of data Mister Smith discovered, now, what unlucky and unfortunate sod gets their names unceremoniously erased from the record of the insanity that is about to unfold?"

"Can goddesses get sirosis?" CC asked absently.

"And we need more estrogen." Urahara interjected, Yoruichi appeared ready to strangle the green haired witch.

"Honey, if I could get sirosis I'd have done it centuries ago." Washu sipped the bottle and grinned in her infuriatingly amused way. "The rate I drink..... but no, ticking as regular and fit as an alarmclock. I can't even get intoxicated. I actually have to tell my body to let me get drunk."

"We were discussing a team and reserve team at Cardiff House, to work with Sakura Ryuunami, now Mori Leigh Johnson, Security Chief of Torchwood 3. IF we can get some trust from Jack, then I want to make an auxilary adjutant to Torchwood Cardiff. Just as Section 9 has their auxilary unit."

"Martel, from Ed's world, the human chimera. She's been briefed on gatekeeper 101, she's been working with us for 6 months but never left her world, its time to break in a greenhorn." Washu gulped at the bottle next. "Then we can get tanked and pick a briefing panel. Aaaah..... we need a jounin, a valkire and a native. Pull Master off his butt, he had his fun with the Paradox Machine and the Doctor, its time to use those restraints on his wrists. They aren't there for him to walk the runway with. Then wake Rem out of bed (5) and ask Seth to come over for sake. Now lets see who you have......" Washu hmmmed as she looked over the list. "This looks like a good team, an alchemist, a jutsu specialist, a shinigami, a hand to hand specialist, and a summoner. On standby a Healer, a wingleader, a human chimera and a former Espada." She quickly folded the list. "Let me get this to the Command Officer."

"Thanks....... and give CC an attitude adjustment, please? She's been alive since before Rome fell, and yet she has the personality of a three year old."

"I've been killed a few thousand times......." CC pointed out. "More than jack has, and healed and reborn...... I've been burned at the stake, tortured, beheaded, poisoned, shot several times, stabbed and tortured. Excuse me for being a cynic."

* * *

1. At the end of Series 3, when the Master was being cremated, a woman picked up Master's signet ring and laughed evilly. Rumor has it that this is Rani, the mad scientist of the timelords. On a similar note, the gatekeepers are more than capable of faking a death, as they did with Ryuuzaki, Watari, Rem and all of Sakura's original team.

2. Six flowers, the shun shun Rikka that Orihime uses can cut anything, block anything and heal anything. The healing technique involves rewinding the 'personal time' of the wounded person in question. In this case Owen was returned to the exact instant before he was shot.

3. When I looked up the original series on wikipedia, I counted over thirty companions /before/ Rose.

4. Gatekeepers very rarely create permanent bases, Canyon One is one of these, but Niihama Weyr and Daijuma Hold are located on the ruins of Seminole Hold. The gatekeepers did not wish to interfere with pernese social development, and so they formed a Hold/Crafthall/Weyr coverage area for supplies. Daijuma Hold and Niihama Weyr are only accessible by dragonback and Daijuma by ship. There are no inland roads leading to the area. Hideo Kuze, from GitS Gig2 is the Lord Holder for Daijuma hold, hence its name. Niihama Weyr consists of elite dragonriders and gatekeepers, and at that moment is currently in its foundation. Circuit Wing is Patrol

* * *

**Gatekeeper Encyclopedia!**

Urahara: I'm Kisuke Urahara.

Sarah Jane: And I'm Sarah Jane Smith.

Urahara: We're going to be hosting the Gatekeeper Encyclopedia Omake!

Sarah Jane: So that all you Torchwood fans don't get confused about the information the gatekeepers are tossing around. (cues the image screen) Today's topic.......

Urahara and Sarah Jane: Reincarnation!

Urahara: Gatekeepers are the mortal manifestations of the gods and goddesses. As such they and their cousins the Valkire are constantly being reincarnated. The secret to this is..... Sarah Jane the screen please.

Sarah Jane: Its not working. K-9 a little help!

K-9 barks, moving in to fix the screen. "This will take a few moments mistress!" The screen fizzles to life. "the repairs were rudimentary, please take better care of your equipment!" Away he goes.

Urahara: ALRIGHT! (calls up diagrams) Gatekeepers are reincarnated thanks to something called a powercore. Powercores manifest visually as orbs inside of the body. They are hidden underneath an individiduals soul, but are seperate from it. Because of that division, the Homonculi of Full Metal Alchemist. (points to diagram depicting Wrath) Like young Rasu, are capable of potentially being gatekeepers.

Sarah Jane: Further, powercores can enter a bioengineered life form. We see this with Doctor's daughter Jenny, who still has a powercore even if she's the product of a progenation machine, and isn't that why you're interested in Luke as well?

Urahara: well, he does have the power. Valkire, low to mid range I think.

Sarah Jane: I suppose I should be proud?

Urahara: Indeed, now here's a ringer! (cues the screen and points with pointer) Memories and reincarnation!!!! Sumisu-chan if you please.

Sarah Jane: Right. In the olden days the gods and goddesses remembered their prior incarnations. But gatekeepers typically don't know who or what they were in a past life. Its considered extremely rude to expect a reincarnated gatekeeper to behave the way they did in a former incarnation. And blaming a new incarnation for misdeeds of a previous life is considered extremely rude, boardering on prejudicial.

Urahara: Of course, sometimes you find out anyway. Sakura's past incarnations include Lilith, Abel's dead lover from Trinity Blood, Helen of Troy, Kaname Tousen's older sister, and believe it or not I hear she was one of the doctor's schoolfriends in a past life.

Sarah jane: You're kidding!

Urahara: Nope, from what I was told, this is the second incarnation she gets to travel with Doctor in. Right, we're almost finished! A gatekeeper can take on the genetic identity of one past incarnation. So for example Sakura became a shinigami, Jazra gained the bloodline limit of the Naruto World's Hyuuga clan.

Sarah Jane: Katry, another member of Sakura's original team, became an Inu-yokai, using the ability to break a long standing family curse. And Donna used the ability to become a Timelord when the Doctor's seal broke.

Urahara: I think that's about it Sumisu-chan, what do you think?

Sarah Jane: I think that about covers it.

Urahara and Sarah Jane: Then stay tuned, next chapter! _Welcome to Cardiff! The Torchwood Adjutant!_


	3. Did you have a dragon?

Things around Torchwood remained slow until that first evening, when Sakura as 'Mori Leigh Johnson' heard an alarm go off. "Ho boy, what happened?"

Toshiko checked the alarm. "The rift is opening, I'm getting about seven lifesigns, maybe eight. Running identification..... hmm.... this is odd. Your garden variety Weevil, but most of the ones we find are already /in/ Cardiff."

"In? Garden variety?"

"Picture very ugly wrinkled humanoid aliens with big fangs and a nasty attitude. They're pretty common around Cardiff, kinda like alligators in the sewers." Owen explained. "Relatively easy to deal with. Think of them as alien hollows...... i suppose."

"In strength or in resemblance?" Sakura asked.

"Proportionate strength......" Jack explained. "Suit up people, this is routine, but there are a lot of them. They're just outside of town, we can catch them before they cause any trouble."

"Its an EASY evening." Owen taunted. "Perfect for a rookie like Sakura..... or do you prefer 'Mori?'"

"Oh shut up." Sakura growled.

"Doctor and I have to stay and look after Orihime and Donna." Martha told them. "He's trying to find out as much about the gatekeepers as he can. And they'll be coming with his new gatekey soon. Urahara left him some cryptic data and some clues. We're both going to be tied down for the evening. Good luck."

They'd gotten all their gear into the car and taken off for the edge of town. "So.... you could have picked ANY sirname, why'd you pick "Leigh Johnson?"" Ianto asked.

"A favorite detective story, the last name of the main character was 'Leigh Johnson.' She was head of priority homicide, skilled interrogator, great leader, southern belle and toughgirl in the same woman." (1) Sakura replied. "Though I doubt she'd have faired well in Torchwood. Girls with guns are sexy though. Seriously sexy."

Jack laughed. "Nice...... do gatekeepers always use pun names as aliases?"

"No, when I was a girl, just starting out, I used 'Gwen Waverider' as in Gweneviere the queen and waverider, a surfer or sailor. I thought it sounded cool, and when I ended up with an ancient water dragon sealed inside my soul the last name fit perfectly. When I went on assignment as part of the anti-Kira taskforce, I was asked to be their leader's bodyguard, I needed a Japanese sirname that could be put on an ID badge. I picked Ryuunami, from 'dragon' and 'wave.' Plus, it sounded similar to the alias of the man I was asked to protect, Ryuuzaki. People saw a resemblance between the two of us, so Ryuunami fit my power and my post." Sakura said quietly. "When I died, I took the name I'd had as a little girl, Sakura. Its funny, when I was a kid I HATED being called Sakura. It means 'cherry blossom' and I thought that being named after a flower /sucked./ As an adult I didn't mind it at all."

"You coulda gone by 'Gwen' again." Owen teased.

"We have our hands full enough with /ONE/ Gwen!" Jack snickered. "We don't need two of them."

"and /what/ do you mean by /that/?" Gwen demanded.

"That you're unique!" Jack said cheerfully.

"I hate to nag, but at the rate you're /squabbling/ you're going to cause an /accident!/" Toshiko chastised. "Fortunately we're almost there."

The tracker lead to a stand of trees outside a farm. "Shouldn't be too......... far?"

* * *

"Whatever these things are, they aren't that /strong/!" Edward growled, clapping his hands and causing the nearest trees to reform into a cage. "But they sure are stubborn."

"Will you three quit fooling around?" Hitsugaya watched icily with Hinata. The air around the battlefield was /chill/ with his annoyance.

Byron whirled, his doll cuffing one of the offending weevils upside the head and sending it flying into a tree. "Really? They don't seem to like /you/ but they seem to think I'm a CHEWTOY." Byron's arm was, indeed, bleeding. He hadn't gotten the chance to fully don the armguards and leg guards that would allow him full use of his doll, forcing him to use its half strength 'adumla' aspect. Byron's doll had two versions, adumla was passive, disliking combat and holding back whenever possible /even/ against his orders, and Dannega, a /really/ tough bear, was aggressive. "And Adumla is /not/ very accomodating this evening. Plus those things' TEETH don't look very sanitary."

Arina didn't sound very amenable. "Blaziken, kick 'em down and leave them be. They're obviously not very smart, and that's a farm through the trees, there's no need to use any fire."

The translation crystal blaziken wore around his neck blinked. "As you wish Arina!" The pokemon rescued Hinata from a potentially devastating strike and kicked the offending alien upside the head. "Alright, Lady Hinata."

"YOW! Hey that's my ARMOR that thing just BIT!" Byron snarled. "It'll get it CONTAMINATED!"

Edward rolled his eyes, clapping his hands and placing them on the ground. The trees spun and bound themselves into a cage that bound the remainder. "Nice welcoming party /WE/ get."

"Helloooooooo!" A call from the edge of the stand of trees got their attention. Hitsugaya counted six flashlights. "Who's down there?"

Hitsugaya sighed, turning from the debacle. Frost was rapidly creeping over the grass where he stood. "And I presume that's Torchwood?" He called into the darkness.

"Yeah, Captain Jack Harkness, leader of hub 3."

"Captain Toushiro Hitsugaya, shinigami 10th. I'm leader of a gatekeeper squad sent to Cardiff to keep your hollow problem in line." by this time fog was rolling over the battlefield.

"And the fog is just his way of saying he's annoyed." Byron said snidely. "The frost too...... it does that when he's....."

"Byron I should put numbweed on your arm." Hinata reminded him as she pulled out a first aid kit. "They seemed to think you were edible. And that has to hurt alot, it might get infected."

Byron carefully removed his armor. "Thank you Audumla......... next time a little more /aggression/ into the bargain?"

"I apologize Byron, they were far weaker than I, I did not wish to cause unneccesary harm." A nebulous silvery shape hovered behind him as the Bount removed two metal arm guards from each arm. The faintest flash of a pure white swan marked the Doll's departure.

"Which is why I'm currently bleeding." Byron was now removing his shirt. He thrust the bleeding arm out, turning his head and grimacing. "Do your worst. Frankly I hate numbweed. If the wound is big enough I can't move my /arm./"

"I apologize, my healing ointment only treats infection not......."

"BE nice to the woman!" Arina planted a foot on Byron's head and threatened to push him over. "Blaziken keep your claws out of there." The pokemon ranger said, not even looking in the pokemon's direction. Arina's blaziken was poking at one of the weevils through the bars of the wood 'cage'. The pokemon growled, sticking his tongue out at the monster before moving to stand behind his partner and placing a claw possessively on her shoulder.

"I could have been home in my studio, I was nice enough to come up here with you guys instead. You're just lucky, they were going to pick Raito instead. He got onto the reserve." Byron kept his arm held out while he complained, Hinata tending to the wound.

"Sorry, I'm not a medic nin. I can't do more than clean and bandage." Hinata sighed, "Almost......" She closed her eyes. "Byakugan!" the muscles around her eyes tightened, so did those in the eye itself. Two fingers started to glow. "This will pinch." She carefully started jabbing tenketsu. "Father said that this speeds healing in the field, it loosens the chakra network and lets energy start healing the wound faster."

"What happened?" Jack and Hitsugaya had moved off to the side while the rest of the team prepared to move the weevils Hitsugaya's group had captured. Edward joined them.

"We were on our way to the safehouse the gatekeepers set up in Cardiff, gatekeepers usually start on the edge of town and walk in so they get familiar with the area." Hitsugaya explained. "Then this lot showed up. I asked the others to try and lure them away from the farmhouse so we wouldn't cause as much of a disturbance fighting them. Edward here is an alchemist, he transmuted the trees into restraints or we'd have had a much bigger hassel than we did. I really didn't feel like using Hyourinmaru on them. And Byron was getting gnawed on."

"I don't know what it is. I mean do I /SMELL/ like food?" Byron demanded. "HELOOOO! I eat ghosts, carve statues and hang out with a bear and a swan!!!! That and I shout my attacks in german. DO I SMELL LIKE FOOD???"

"You smell period." Arina said sardonically. "And you sound like a jerk." She called out again. "Blaziken leave them alone!"

The pokemon had been harassing the caged weevils, prodding the bars and making faces. "They smell like team rocket puss." Blaziken made a face, still inspecting the weevils in their cage. "I can't believe I kicked one." There was a snarl from inside the cage. "They need more kicking." He remarked. "Don't make me do it this time."

"I think we'd better turn them over to you. We'll see you all at the hub this time tomorrow evening." Hitsugaya sighed.

"Don't worry, we're not as weird as you think." Edward assured the gathered Torchwood.

"Oh we won't worry." Owen groaned. "We deal in weird. Breakfast till sundown."

"Sounds like my job. Only I have to travel for it, on foot. My world is still 1918, only without the world war. Cars are for the rich, trains are expensive but move people where they need to go in an emergency. Balloons and airships are a curiousity, and alchemy has taken the place of splitting atoms." Edward flexed his fingers, and the clink of metal was heard. "Oh, and people's limbs can be made of steel if they loose one." Ed drew back his sleeve and showed Jack. "Neat trick. I've got a nasty right hook. Punched out a chimera in one blow."

"Chimera..... I've never seen one of those! Are they that easy to beat? I thought Beleraphon died trying to kill one." Jack asked, a huge grin on his face.

"On a horse that thought it could fly. My world? Chimera are an alchemists attempts at blending animals together. I've seen giant birds, half lions half crocodiles, wolves with scales like lizards. Some of the WEIRDEST monsters I've seen were chimeras." Ed explained. "Hinata, any good?"

"His pride is more chewed than his arm." Hinata blushed. "He'll be fine..... er..... hi!" She chirped, eyes focusing on Jack before she turned red and fainted.

"Not again. Ever since Naruto went off with Neji, any charming looking guy she meets she gets too scared to say hello, blushes and faints." Edward laughed, hurrying over to check Hinata. Blaziken finally finished harassing the weevils and scooped her up.

"Lady Hyuuga, rest well." Blaziken growled.

"How is it you can talk?" Gwen asked, looking up at him. "You don't look like you could."

Blaziken raised his head. "The jewel I wear on my throat." He had a broach around his throat, the gemstone of which was glowing. "I can speak human tongue, but it is difficult." Then his eyes twinkled merrily as he rumbled. "I have, handsome baritone." And started laughing. "Bad diction."

Sakura started laughing. Hitsugaya looked over at her, eyeing his fellow captain. "The Briefing Committee told me to pass along, and confirm to you." He handed her an envelope. "You, Sakura, to be clear, while you're here are Mori Leigh Johnson, ex jsdf captain who witnessed a smuggling ring that was salvaging and distributing alien weapons. You were posted here in Cardiff at the local embassy following the incident, where Jack found and recruited you. You are Torchwood Security Chief for Hub 3."

"Sounds plausible. Security Chief?"

"You are reckless, sometimes brash and violent, and it would explain your unusual level of physical strength." Hitsugaya said curtly.

"Who was the Briefing Committee?"

Edward answered. "Rem, Seth and the native on the council was some genin using the alias Master. He had to have been a bad dude, the restraint cuffs on him were three inches wide and an inch thick, and they had LOTS of little shiny red powergems on them. Alloy of hematite and gold too, heavy equipment."

WHO???? Jack whirled on him. "Who did you say?"

"His alias was Master. He had heavy duty power restraining cuffs on him. They're only used for the most important or dangerous of missions. Briefing committees are always in threes, a shield council rep, a head valkire, and a gatekeeper native to the dimension a team is headed for. You know this Master person?"

"Very bad guy." Jack shuddered. "Almost killed Doctor and destroyed our world."

"Ouch." Arina shook her head. "He had restraints in full use though, if he'd tried anything........ ZZZZZT." She made a cutting motion across her throat. "Zapped. Might be quite amusing to watch."

"Restraints?"

"Gatekeepers with /questionable/ backgrounds, major theivery, offenses to soul, god and body, taboos and attempts to take over the world or mess with reality or similar, are made to sign a cursed scroll known only as the "Kali Blood Pact." Upon completion cuffs of living metal are fused onto their skin and lace themselves to the wearer's bones. The "Blood Pact" is a contract with the goddess of divine justice, Kali. She arms the restraints, which lie dormant until goddess has some dirty work to be done. As long as the restraints are dormant, he or she can do as they like. But when they activate, well, they've been nicknamed 'molten krytponite' because when armed, then activated by violating the terms of the pact, it lays the wearer vulnerable for their achiles heal, forcibly and painfully." Byron chewed on his lips.

"Its like this, what's a timelord's achiles heal? Take away their ability to regenerate and they're weak as newborn kittens. Lets say, hypothetically, that Benten wants Master to steal something. She has Kali, who ENJOYS destruction and mayhem, /arm/ the restraints. She gives him his mission and off he goes. He gets spotted by Doctor and whatever Companion is with him at the time. We'll call her 'C' for now. Unlike Doctor, 'C' has a temper and keeps a sidearm hidden on her whenever she can. He tries to attack 'C' and the Doctor is too slow. The restraints are ARMED, so they activate and remove his ability to regenerate. Master has two choices, he can break off the attack and run for his life, OR he can face the barrel of her 9 milimeter and risk a shot to the head, lungs, either heart or whatever vital organ of choice. Either way, odds are the Master won't be alive in the morning. The effect lasts until he gets his /priorities/ straight and gets back to work." Sakura explained. "Brutal, but effective. If it keeps Orochimaru from stretching his little snakey muscles in front of a fully powered Jinchuriki, it will keep the ultimate of Whoverse badguys focused on his business on the station until he's given the team he's briefing his two dastardly cents. And Master is probably the only bad guy here that I can beat the hell out of in a firefight without fear of collateral damage."

"Not from his ego. He called you a maverick bust heavy blonde gunbunny. Then he said he was mistaken, that was Rose's title and labeled you freak of the year."

"Beautiful. Let me know what he looks like in this generation so I can throw him into a brick wall." Sakura rolled up her sleeves. "Did he let anything spill?"

"No, but he complemented Raito, I think he got on Light's nerves. Tipped his hat to Raito on the way out and said 'congratulations Mister Kira, you're an example for us all.' I thought Raito wanted to pound him, the only reason he didn't get into it right there was that Ryuuzaki hauled him away for an evening /alone./ And as a result, poor Raito is very, very depressed." Byron frowned. "It was weird, for a centuries old timelord he was smaller than Edward or Hitsugaya, and they're both boardering on shrimpish."

"WHO ARE YOU CALLING SO SMALL HE'D BE STEPPED ON BY AN ANT?????"

"SHRIMPISH! Who are you calling SHRIMPISH? DO I LOOK LIKE SEAFOOD TO YOU????"

"Nobody said anything about that!" The other gatekeepers chorused.

"Human Light or Espada Raito?" Sakura ignored their outrage.

"Espada Raito." Arina added. "He's on reserve, so are Orihime, Aoriya, and Martel."

"For which I'm glad, Marta nearly ripped off my automail when I first met her." Edward told her. "she's pretty damn good. Aoriya can give us transport and Time it for us if things start getting ugly. Orihime's more valuable than she thinks she is, and Raito........."

"I HATE Light." Sakura whined. "ANY espada but him."

"Yeah, but who better to fight a hollow than a hollow? Besides, if he were any danger to us he wouldn't have been allowed to leave Eterna Science Base, OR take up residence in Konoha. Forget Naruto, Tsunade woulda punched his face in." Edward assured her. "Hmmm...... looks like we're neighbors Jack. Hope you don't mind an Auxilary Adjutant."

"They're going to form an Adjutant Unit?" Sakura asked, eyebrows going up.

"Yep, the Gatekeeper safehouse in Cardiff is open for residence as of next week. Our job is to take care of gatekeeper business here in Cardiff. If Torchwood finds something gatekeeper, then we take it off their hands."

"And what makes you think you can take somethin off of OUR hands?" Gwen demanded.

"That's what Adjutants do." Sakura explained. "With organizations like Torchwood, the gatekeepers create a team with talents they think will complement the locals. Though I see no parallels between Hitsugaya and Jack. The difference is like lighting a glacier on fire." She eyed Hitsugaya sidelong. "Then, they place that team in the same city. They aren't accountable to Torchwood, they're allies, its....... complicated. They did the same for my grandfather's unit, Section 9. I did missions with them after Major died. But they created a parallel organization that coordinated with Gramps. Both teams went about their business, but both shared resources, intelligence, data. And if needed they worked together. That's probably why they wanted me running with you guys, I'm used to not existing."

"I do hope there aren't any parallels between us." Hitsugaya said coldly as he regarded Jack. "I should bring you and Kyouraku-taichou to a bar, see how long it takes you both to get drunk and horny. Edward." He lead the others away. "If you all are done. I'll leave you to your weevils." And that last was snorted derisively.

"Oh come on, I was having FUN." Edward whined as he hurried after the shinigami. "Oh wait." He hurried over to the cages he'd made and clapped his hands. The alchemic transformation turned the rough wooden cages into stronger, metal ones. "That should make getting them home easier. Ta ta!" He turned and hurried after Hitsugaya, his scarlet coat billowing dramatically behind him.

"Wait, how will you find us?" Gwen asked. "Our Hub is well guarded and hidden."

"Shinigami. Your captain's spiritual pressure is unique, and bigger than he realizes. Once they've been introduced, a shinigami can find him anywhere." Hitsugaya grinned as he turned to leave, haori trailing behind him. Edward waved goodbye. "See you tomorrow!" Arina led Blaziken away. "Can I kick the weevil one more time?" It begged. "It needs kicking." "Oh shush." Then Byron, strapping his armor back in his bag. "I hope Urahara added an art studio to the safehouse. I've never been to Cardiff. London once..... hmmm..... 50 years ago. But not Wales. I want to paint." Hinata shoved her first aid kit back in its carry case and hurried away. "Hinata is anybody coming?" "No, the farmers are asleep. And Torchwood is the only group in the area." "Then lets get going. We need cords for Aoriya. And she said she'd get firelizards for Torchwood's officers." "oh! I should have called my blue!" "Get home first, then call Mysti."

"Wow......" Jack said as the group left.

"Yeah...... this bunch is gonna be a bloody handful." Owen complained.

* * *

"you all look too exhausted for /just/ weevils to have been out there." Martha watched them troop back into the hub.

"Torchwood now has an Adjutant." Sakura said coldly. "My people blindsided me. Though I have to say...... I'm glad I'm not stuck out here completely alone."

"Well...... while you were gone, Donna was in and out of consciousness, but Orihime's been out like a light."

"You know, Orihime once tried to use her ability on the Hogyouku." Sakura said quietly. "It was just before the fall of Aizen. Of course Aizen hasn't fallen yet but........ she was going to try and destroy it, she knew it would change reality if she did. She was ready to. But then my friend Jazra stopped her."

"Jazra?"

"There were........ well are.......... four keepers that formed my original team. Me a shinigami, Jazra Hyuuga, Katry never did have a sirname, Kailai Otanashi, she's Saya's only female chevallier. Jazra's an old schoolfriend of mine." Sakura sighed. "The only one who knows my real name."

Suddenly a firelizard shrieked. It dove into the HUB out of between, chased by the Pterodactyl and shrilling hysterically at being attacked. "Uh oh, might want to call your watch dactyl off. He'll get....." The bronze firelizard snarled, taking a deep breath. It winked out of existance, then a few beats later it reappeared, behind the pterodactyl. A shrill chirp of triumph, and the tiny creature breathed fire at the poor offending creature. The pterosaur shrieked in fright and flew off elsewhere in the hub. Sakura started laughing. "Come here...... you're looking for me...... I'm down here...."

The bronze whistled, darting over to Sakura. "Firelizard, we use them like carrier pigeons. They can blink between places, between worlds and dimensions, even between times. Tell me cutie, what did you bring me....." Sakura stroked its neck and the bronze churred in delight, dropping a small roll of parchment. "Sealing scroll? Oh hell, what are they......."

"Those..... things......." Toshiko leaned in, the bronze chirped in inquiry. "what....... do they do? How do they find people?"

"They're telepathic. Speaking of which, where DID Mancha go? He's my bronze, he's very old and I worry about him sometimes, I need to reband him." Sakura pressed a hand to the piece of parchment. There was a gentle 'puff' of smoke. It revealed a backpack and a commcrystal. The three joined quartz crystal lit up with the message put in it.

"HEEEEEY! Gwennie darling!" A blonde man, rather effeminate, popped up from the crystal. "Or should I call you Mori? I'm sure you remember me, Aleser Starlion, training officer, Snowflake. I got Lirael and Gabraiel to put together a standard toolkit for your stay at Torchwood. Aoriya is coming with firelizard eggs for Torchwood and a second egg for you, she only was able to get three for them, plus yours, but she thinks one of them might be a queen, and the other two brown or bronze. One for Jack, one for their second in command and one for their medical officer. Though you know how the little flitters get, when they hatch its a freeforall. The one picked for Jack could go to.... oh I dunno, Ianto maybe. Its completely random. They seem to like the chaos that causes. Alright, besides the lizards I should warn you, a week from now you're getting a new Tap. From the inter, our intelligence says he's more of the sci fi type than the anime type, so he should recognize where he is pretty damn quick. His dossier is on your laptop. Explain about taps to Jack and tell him he's your responsibility and his arrival is not negotiable. He is not to go out on missions with the Torchwood team, though if they need somebody to run errands and fetch and carry around the Hub he can do that. He's there to learn, not to fight."

"I've sent numbweed, fellis, klah, redwort, a banding kit, a laptop and extra storage, and a few other gadgets that should help you out immensely." Aleser added. "Rei is going to be doing her cloak and dagger routine, she just needs to finalize some things, but I'm sure you've heard by now. The gatekeepers are officially and unofficially starting an Adjutant to Torchwood 3. Please try to smooth things over with Jack. I'm also officially naming Mori Leigh Johnson exchange keeper for this particular world. You're in for a long stay, no need to be uncomfortable. Also, even if this world doesn't have gatekeepers, it does have shadowmancers. Stay on the look out for any unusual Shadow activity. Most of what's going on here will be off the record completely. We've lost data before, rather conveinantly as I'm sure you know by now." he winked. "Nobody will know there were gatekeepers here. Not for another 5 centuries. You have your 4th seat Rose Tyler to thank. She didn't go straight home like you told her." Aleser snickered. "She told us what happened before she finally went home to your time, Sakura. She asked us to come up with backup. 'I'm not going to let Aizen lay a claw on Doctor, or any of my friends. Please, find some way to send Sakura backup! She can't take Aizen on her own!' Well...... Aizen is on our most wanted list, so its our business if he's coming into the Whoverse. Besides, its home to one of the 4 first races, damage there is potentially serious."

"Well...... anything I've forgotten is on the laptop. Do me a favor will you? Since I'm giving you numbweed, AND firelizards, think Jack could send the recipe for his amnesia pills? In case you didn't know Jack, gatekeepers trade formulas and information and such among each other. We have plenty of ways of erasing or modifying memory, but we're always looking to build a better mousetrap." He winked. "Aleser Starlion, signing off. seeeee you Gwenling." The bronze firelizard chittered, eyeing those in the room. It looked up, then crouched and VOOSH! It shot upwards, shrilling in excitement before it disappeared.

"I need to remind him SAKURA SAKURA SAKURA!!!! Gwen is Cooper, I am Sakura. Jessus." Sakura groaned. "Or Mori rather. I didn't think my old alias would be so pervasive. First Tennyson and now Cooper." She shook her head. "Alright......" She looked up at the rest of the group. Doctor had taken a spot on the catwalk above them, and Martha had moved closer to listen.

"Tap, that's what we call a new gatekeeper. The spell activates gatekeeper powers, and in the case of some genin, apprentice gatekeepers, sedates them. The gatekeeper, if meant to go somewhere other than their homeworld, is transported to the world where they're targeted. That's called their 'first world.' The Inter has stories...... its central to the entire multiverse, and they have a story, or a show, or a novel or a anime or manga or even so far back as myth and legend, for almost every other universe. They say the humans there tap into the consciousness of every other universe, and the stories and shows and whathaveyou are the result. That's how I'd heard about the Doctor before he showed up, knew what the Tardis sounded like, I'd seen it before back in the inter. But I never got to finish watching, I only got as far as Doctor and Rose." Sakura sighed. "Alright, this guy is from the same world /I/ originally came from, odds are the instant he lays eyes on Doctor or Jack or Martha he'll probably flip out. I'm sending the dossier to your database."

"New kid?" Jack asked, leaning in to peer over her shoulder. Martha pulled up a chair next to Sakura to peek.

"here we go, no name because he has to pick an alias. Age twelve, hair brown, eyes brown. Average height and build. Not very athletic but a high IQ, three chess trophies and head of middle school newspaper. Plays Fencing for his town's local team. Reccomendation: Technologica and Moderna. Nationality: American, family moved from........ oooooh, this is why he's coming to us. Family moved to America from Inter Cardiff three years before he was born. Torchwood Cardiff reccomended post due to dimensional simularities. Family: recently deceased, tap urgent. That means the gatekeepers are snapping him up before he can be pulled into Foster care. In which case we'd lose track of him."

"Nuts, do you mean like fangirls, or fanboys?" Owen asked.

"Oh yeah. You don't want to meet the Cosplay twins in a dark alley. They're a comm and supply officer respectively, but Lirael and Gabraiel pretty much harass anybody they recognize. I mean /obnoxiously/ so. Of course, those two are extreme examples. Most gatekeepers consider fangirl or fanboyish behavior rude." Sakura sighed, and started digging through the pack. "To go over the transmission, the Snowflake is the Astralgator's personal guard. The Astralgator is leader of all gatekeepers. She's acting on behalf of Benten, weilds her power on earth, and because there have been more assasinations of her than any other Gatekeeper Office, her name is never released. In fact, nine times out of ten the Astralgator fakes her death as a diversionary tactic. Nobody is going to suspect a deadwoman of being the gatekeeper's highest level leader. Instead, she gives orders to six officers known as the "Snowflake." You've just met Aleser Starlion. I've only met two others from this regime, Command Officer Rei Ironraven and Belili Desertmoon."

"Aliases I assume?" Gwen asked, arching an eyebrow. "Are those just for fun or do you give yourselves weird names for a reason?"

"Believe it or not Gwen, we have badguys too. Besides Aizen we have Shadowmancers, we have the Dianic Star Renegades, we have a traitor whom /I/ can't name because his attack and defeat are Fixed in the gatekeeper timeline. I have to stand by and watch him kill my friends. Fun that. If our real names are known anywhere, some of those badguys can use various forms of psychic abilities and dark magic to kill us. Because of that we bury our names and pick up aliases. I don't even remember all of my real name. I know I was called Sakura, but my sirname..... long since forgotten. Its the price we pay for the freedom we enjoy. I've handled introductions over and over again." Sakura sighed. "I can do it again. And there are others that are gone by now." Sakura sounded exhausted and snappish. "I need sleep. And its almost 1am."

"There's a room off the infirmary. Aaah, you'd have to share with Martha though."

"Wait! There's only one bed in there!" Martha protested.

"don't worry, i fall asleep quick." Sakura grunted. "Go ahead and copy whatever data you want from the laptop." She got up, leaving her gear behind. The room was easy to find. Sakura stripped without hesitation, causing the doctor behind her to sputter. "What?"

"Do you have ANY shame?" Martha demanded, blushing and turning hear head away.

"Oh is that what you're on about? Its nothing you haven't seen in the mirror, and in response to 'shame?' I've spent enough seasons the guest of Dragon Weyrs. The Dragonboys and girls of Pern don't even flinch at having to share the same bed for the night, since they know there isn't always adult things going on beneath the sheets. Now excuse me before i faint." Sakura was asleep almost the instant her head hit the pillow. She wasn't going to argue with Martha right then, she was exhausted.

"Really..... ah well, Doctor didn't do anything that night at Shakespeare's." Martha annoyedly took the opposite end of the bed. "Really, just a female counterpart to the doctor."

The dream that Sakura thought she had buried ages ago, tearing at her soul so bad her mind was screaming. Salt in the wound, a scream on raw nerves. Major, body shattered and broken...... arm lolling uselessly out of the stretcher and her watch falling to the pavement as it ceased ticking the minutes of her life. ZP, disappearing in a flash of light, sacrificing herself for her people, Sakura never even sure she'd come BACK!!! Her own body, heavy and useless with Szayel's combination of poison and septic bacteria, sinking, sinking, Seiryuu screaming. Piskerath and Shizarith keening distantly. Fading to.............

_SAKURA!!!!!!! SAKURA WAKE UP!!!!!!! _Something buzzed gently by Sakura's ear.

Sakura's eyes snapped open, Jack, Martha and Doctor leaning over her. She had fallen off the bed and onto the floor. Everyone else had gone home. Sakura sat up, shaking her head, trying to clear it. "SS...... sorry......" She must have been screaming in her sleep. What was wrong with her? She never had nightmares like this.

"What the hell happened? I thought you were having a seizure or something." That was Martha. "You were screaming in your sleep....."

"An old nightmare." Sakura was shaking. "What time is it?" She sputtered, complexion pale.

"5am. What the hell happened?" Doctor asked, pale with worry as he regarded her. "The only thing that woke you up was me buzzing my screwdriver by your ear. Really. You were screaming curses in languages I haven't heard in centuries."

Sakura buried her face in her hands. "Ghosts, that's it. Ghosts I thought I'd long since crossed. I need to go back to sleep, four hours is not enough."

"We're finding you an apartment." Martha complained. "I can't take this every night. Fine, go back to sleep." Doctor wrapped an arm around Jack's shoulders and steered him out, smirking. ("Now, before Sakura had a nightmare, where were we?") Sakura curled up as far away from Martha as she could get. "What's wrong with you?"

"A part of my soul was torn away, and I thought I'd forgotten about it." Sakura groaned. "I didn't think...... damn. I need to see if there are some amulets or something, or sleeping pills."

"Or something." Sakura inched away from the other. "Is this a shinigami thing? With the nightmares?" Martha asked worriedly.

"No, just a Sakura thing........ Hey, can we just..... let it be for now?" Sakura yawned, drifting off.

Martha watched the shinigami fall asleep warily. "At least say something......" She muttered, climbing in behind Sakura and covering them over with the blanket. "Honestly....." She scooched closer. This time Martha didn't shy away. She's curled up like a child, terrified under the bed. Sakura wouldn't notice the arm over her shoulders. And martha felt sorry for the poor woman.

* * *

Sakura was up at /ten./ "It should be OBSCENE to be that cheerful." The groaned. "Where'd Doctor get to?"

"He's been sent up to shield station. No idea what they want him for." Jack told her. "You're on your own...... what /was/ last night?"

"What happened last night?" Owen blinked. "Oh, Orihime's conscious, and hungry. And can I just say that I've seen pregnant women with tamer cravings than the things she's asked for?"

Sakura laughed. "Last night was none of your business."

"She woke up screaming, nightmares........" Martha handed Sakura coffee. "I thought she was going into shock or something."

"Next time a dragon dies, remind me to put you two in charge of healing its rider." Sakura said coldly. "And I'm sure Owen has /nightmares/ about /him/ dying?"

"Nightmares........ oooooooh......" Owen teased. "Nightmares are commonplace here love, thats why we have coffee, to forget them." He snickered.

"Oh leave it." Toshiko scolded.

Sakura ignored them, gulping on the offered mug of coffee.

"All I'm saying is that a shinigami and a gatekeeper, you'd think she'd have more backbone." Owen was telling Gwen. "Really, we've all had our nightmares and we all got over them....... "

Sakura snapped, shunpo had her holding Owen by the collar in less than a second, pushing a knee into his guts where the bullet hole had been. Her eyes blazing. "Did you know the Komodo dragon has 28 Gram-negative and 29 Gram-positive strains of bacteria in its saliva? 4 of them lethal enough to kill a fully grown man in less than 48 hours?" She snarled, shoving him against the wall. "Ever been speared on a SWORD with the SAME kind of bacteria on it??? Ever had your GUTS crushed by an opponent FLICKING HIS FINGERS? Think you can let THAT go?" She demanded. Just as quickly she let him go and threw herself back down into the chair she'd been in. "You were shot. I was MANGLED, POISONED, TORTURED and finally died of septic SHOCK."

"Jeez, hairtrigger aren't you?" Owen asked, sneering back at her. "We all have issues, Ianto still has nightmares about Canary Warf."

"I do /not./"

"Oh Jack, oh jack. I had the most horrible bad dream Jack! I saw them cyberfy Lisa and they were coming for me ne......." Ianto growled, and if Sakura hadn't already grabbed the snarky medic by the collar he'd have punched him.

"Sakura, its not worth rising to his bait. Owen gets snarky all the time, we ignore it." Toshiko told her reasonably.

Sakura closed her eyes, breathing deeply. "I'll be fine."

"you sure?" Ianto asked her. "You were kinda scary for a moment."

"Remind me to introduce you to Kikyo sometime. Its something only psychics or psychopomps understand. And I don't feel like explaining it. Right now I'm hungry, and in the Soul Society coffee is a /luxury./" Sakura was slowly mellowing out.

"Really? Luxury?" Ianto blinked in surprise. "How come?"

"Everything but chocolate, coffee and some types of seasonings like vanilla and cinnamon grow in the Soul Society. We even get Numbweed and fellis to grow with the right plantfood. But Coffee doesn't seem to like us. I think its the reishi level."

"What's reishi?" Martha asked. "You mentioned it before."

"spirit particles. They're what dead people and ghosts breathe. They also make up nearly everything in the Soul Society. They're used in making gigai, and they're also employed by the Quincy as weapons. Some shinigami and arrancar complain that they have trouble breathing when they enter the mortal realm. Our botanists, gatekeeper at least, think that some foods like chocolate and coffee and other spices like vanilla need /air/ not reishi, to grow." Sakura groaned. "Man I feel like crap."

"Welcome to our world." Jack teased. "I swear, I almost had a heart attack last night. One minute Doctor and I were enjoying ourselves and then THUD eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!." He mimicked.

"So what were you and Doctor doing last night, I mean while I was asleep." Sakura snickered. "Nothing he didn't need badly I'll bet. You know we went to visit Delphine and her kids.

"You have a dirty mind don't you?" Jack teased.

"Yeah, I can be pretty naughty when I want to. I'm as bad a womanizer as you are. But remind me to wear an iron girdle around you. I have enough kids and I don't need anymore."

"How many kids?" Gwen asked curiously.

"Aaaaah...... I stopped counting at 30. And I have about 50 grandkids."

Gwen blanched. "how on earth can you........"

"Clanhead. Civic duty to my clan. Nobility is required to leave an heir. That and I have Jack's habit of not keeping my hands to myself." Sakura licked her lips. "Of course, only with certain people. I'm a finicky little whore."

"I'll say!" Gwen shuddered. "30 kids. I think I'd shoot myself."

Sakura laughed. "I'm 500 years old Gwen, or..... hmm......... 516? 517?" She said, draining the last of the coffee in her mug. "When you're that old you have a lot of kids." Sakura held up her arm, fingering Major's watch. "Shinigami Clanheads..... aaaah, I promised I'd never inflict it on any of /my/ kids. But a lot of them marry for politics rather than love. The old asian stereotype of arranged marriages from birth." She sighed, moving to get another cup of coffee and a couple of bagels from the box sitting by the coffee maker.

"Anything you can tell us about the gatekeepers that showed up last night? Or the ones that they mentioned were coming?" Jack asked her, getting down to business.

Sakura's gulping of coffee slowed, thinking for a moment. "Hitsugaya is a shinigami captain, just like me. He's got power over ice. You can tell he's mad when the air starts getting cold. He's a little standoffish and over formal, but its mainly because he's older than Jack and stuck in the body of a fourteen year old. He kinda feels like he doesn't get the respect due his rank, just because he looks little. Once its clear to him Jack that you /also/ are older than you appear, he'll probably treat you with the respect he thinks you rank is due. Most shinigami who are stuck in younger looking forms don't like being called 'little' or 'young' because most of them are between a century and three centuries old by the time they attain lieutenant rank, and closer to 4 when they take the Captain's exam."

"So he won't be very difficult to get along with?" Asked Ianto. "I mean he sounds a little....."

"Oh trust me, if Hitsugaya gets mad, you'd better check the air conditioning. Lots and lots of shinigami end up turning eccentric, though personally I'd rather they send Amagai or Kyouraku, Hitsu is a pretty good choice. I think he'd be a good fit here, and I can't see anything you guys do that could make him get upset. Not after having a lieutenant like Matsumoto. Aaaah, Edward. The Full Metal Alchemist and Hero of the people. His right arm and left leg are what we call 'automail' a very primative type of prosthetics, but which requires no computerized systems. He...... well...... when he was eleven and his little brother were ten, they committed an alchemical taboo, he paid for it with an arm and a leg, literally, and his little brother Al was almost killed in the process. Edward holds the rank of Major in the Amestrian military, and is the youngest alchemist /ever/ to pass the State Certification exam. He has a hot temper, but a good disposition, he dislikes milk, needles, and heaven help you if you call him small. Ed also has an ability unusual for an alchemist, he can clap his hands and then touch an object in order to transmute it. Most state alchemists need a special glove or tattoos in order to do similar techniques. Just like Doctor Ed dislikes using guns, but that's because he's never needed one. He can transmute his automail arm into a blade. He can fight on par with a fully grown Homunculus and either win or end up in a stalemate." Sakura chewed on her lip. "He might actually like you guys."

"Hot head? Easy to get along with?" Jack asked, Sakura noticed that Martha had stayed quiet through most of this.

"A combination of both. He's very loyal. The alchemist's creed is 'for the people' and a lot of people on his world consider that an empty phrase, but Ed takes care to exemplify it. He also believes in the philosophy of equivalent exchange. Its basically 'karma' or 'you reap what you sow.' But its a lot deeper than that. Some alchemists take it so far that they trade favor for favor, or item for item. Most people think that alchemy is magic, its not. Its basically an accellerated form of chemistry. You take the materials normally used for the reaction, for example a bar of iron or a broken radio, draw a ritual circle on the ground in some form, and place it in the center. When activated, the circle shapes the iron into a tool or statue, or fixes the radio. Ed's an expert in what's called 'human alchemy' that's a dark practice in general, because you're performing the transmutation on living matter. That was the Taboo he and his brother committed. He tried to bring the dead back to life. It combines animals, or animals and humans, or performs a soul attachment, or in its most extreme form, creates a homunculus. Almost always there's a price to be paid. Making lead into gold? Physically impossible and attempting to do so is illegal. Living forever? Nope, sorry, the only way to do it is to steal another person's body, and the more you do that, the less time the body lasts. Bringing the dead back to life? Sorry, that creates a homonculus, a half formed monster that needs some seriously evil materials to even take a human form. Not magic, science."

"sounds........ that's not as bad as some of the things we've seen I think." Gwen looked deep in thought. "This Ed, that's what he did isn't it? Created a homunculus I mean."

"Yeah, at the ages of 11 and 10, Ed and his little brother Alphonse tried to bring their dead mother back to life, using notes left behind by their father. They're the sons of Hoenheim, a VERY VERY powerful and talented alchemist. They say he could do miracles with a transmutation circle. But what Hoenheim left behind for them is a very, VERY high level set of alchemy equipment. Things ten year olds shouldn't be getting into. Ed lost a leg, the only way he could save Al's life was giving his right arm to seal Al's soul into a suit of armor. Its called a soul attachment, its considered taboo alchemy in the extreme, but its the only thing Ed could think of at the time to save his brother. He didn't even know the name of what he'd done. Ed's got wisdom that a boy his age shouldn't, he witnessed the most terrifying entity in his entire world, the Alchemical gate and the......... they're called the Gate Children. The thought of them even scares me. But because of that encounter, he can charge headlong into some battles that have grown men dropping to their knees and crossing themselves in terror."

"Gate, you mean like the gates the gatekeepers guard?" Gwen insisted. "And these homonculi, what makes them so terrifying?"

Sakura sighed, rubbing her forehead. "Gwen, there are gates that are the boarder between dimensions, and there are Gate gates. Gate gates usually have some kind of failsafe built in. The gates of hell are an example, which are summoned when a shinigami exorcises a hollow formed from a criminal, they're terrifying, I've seen new recruits wet themselves when they see it for the first time. But the gates of hell only take the exorcised hollow, they leave anybody else in the vicinity alone. By contrast, the Alchemical Gate can take anything in the room with it that it wants. Picture a pocket dimension covered in golden light, like one might imagine the entry to heaven might look like. Inside is a gate with an eye carved on the front and skulls and other undead depicted on it. It opens, and inside there is a massive being with a single glowing eye. Looking into the eye of the gate, well, its like when Timelords look into the Untempered Schizm. And the eye is not alone, there are tiny.... black..... fiends, fanged, and resembling tiny black toddlers or babies. Those are called "gate children" which are capable of tearing off limbs and ripping out organs. Their job is to enforce the laws of alchemy's equivalent exchange, but they enjoy causing as much damage as they can to those in the room. Its like being in the path of a hurricane, a hurricane doesn't care about a single individual or individuals, it just kills, damages, destroys indescriminatly. Its viewed as the most forbidden sight in the entire alchemical world and profession. Now please, let it lie, and let me finish briefing you and the rest of the group on the gatekeepers that are coming."

Jack sent Gwen a look, and the woman subsided. "The others? I heard one of them call himself a vampire? Is he really?"

"No, though vampires do exist, and some of them are very helpful to us, he's a Bount. Bount eat the souls of the dead, not in the way that the hollows do, but it gives them extra power in battle and keeps them healthy. Most won't feed unless they /need/ it for maintaining their health. I've never seen one in action, awhile ago one really powerful bount named Kariya took over a group of most of the few remaining bount. He was outraged because the shinigami had bioengineered the Bount and then abandoned them or treated them as servents. They never age, and they can't reproduce, so when the last of them go, that's it, they're gone. And unlike shinigami, the bount are corporeal beings, they have a harder time hiding themselves among humans than shinigami do. Kariya launched an attack on the soul society, one that he purposefully threw in such a fashion that it would result in all his bount followers dying with him. Nobody is sure why. They were all assumed dead, I know the name of the one who was there last night, but not too much else besides that he's a little bitter and somewhat antisocial from being on his lonesome. It was that isolation that saved him from Kariya. And by bount standards he's young, he's only about a century old. He's also an artist, making things out of twisted scrap metal and abandoned junk. He repaired Kariya's abandoned compound after his death, and used it as a home. The gatekeepers were trying to convince him to let them use it as a safehouse. But if they succeeded he probably had a hard time of adapting."

"So he's an unknown to you? You don't know anything else about him?" Jack asked her. He sounded worried.

"Unfortunately, no." Sakura told him. "The one time I saw him he saved me from a hollow, but he did it simply because the hollow had wrecked his arts studio, cost him about 10,000 USD in damage to his work and ruined his chance of getting a statue in a nearby museum. Hunted it down for revenge."

"sounds like somebody you don't cross." Owen shuddered. "He chased down a hollow in cold blood just because it messed up his workstudio?"

"Yeah, I suppose he'll make more sense when we meet him." Sakura thought for a moment. "Arina is a member of the Pokemon Rangers. They're kind of the long range law enforcement of their world. However, she's an example of how gatekeeper families sometimes span dimensions, because her mother and aunt are from my Major's homeworld. Gatekeepers classify them as summoners. Lilly, our little riolu, is native to her world. There are...... creatures there, that gatekeepers use as familiars. A summoner is any gatekeeper individual who relies exclusively or almost exclusively on a familiar. Arina's very tough, likes to tease, kinda mischevious but definately a good person. Her world is important to the gatekeepers because its a major training and supply area. Emergencies there tend to be mild, though periodically a rampaging Legendary causes trouble. The Pokemon Rangers are different from your typical competitive pokemon trainer because they ONLY have one partner, as opposed to a standard team of six. If they need help they use something called a capture styler, it temporarily.... not really hypnotism, more like domesticating the local pokemon into helping them. When released, the 'borrowed' creature is released back into the wild and goes about its business again. Arina's organization excell at wilderness survival. Personally I'm glad that she's coming. As for her blaziken, well...... the phrase 'leaping tall buildings in a single bound' is an understatement. Physically powerful, plus, it can breathe fire. It can apply several thousand pounds per square inch of force into one punch or kick. You may have thought the Hulk was strong, this thing is real and likely could kick over a dahlek and send it flying. Breathes fire so hot it can melt that gear you call a door into a pile of slag probably inside of ten minutes."

"Woah, that thing didn't look like very much." Ianto ventured. "I mean, about six feet, yeah that's tall but......"

"I've seen dragons the size of an L 1011 jet, and there are pokemon like Blaziken the size of that SUV you guys drove around. I had a whole group of them. A long time ago. I won a competition with them, they called it the Ribbon Cup. One of the few adventures I had on my own. One of the few things I got to do because of me, not because I was ordered to." Sakura shook her head. "And the bad guys screwed that up anyway. Okay, the final member chosen for their main team is Hinata Hyuuga. Hyuuga have an ability known as the Byakugan. Its an optical ability that enables them to see the chakra network, the life force, of other people. Hyuuga can see in almost complete 360 degrees, with the record being a 500 meter radius.........."

"Wait, that's impossible!" Martha protested. "In order to have a field of vision /that/ wide the lenses on her eyes would have to be huge!"

Owen finished for her. "The bigger the lens, the better the vision but it causes an organism to be photosensitive." Owen agreed. "It would cause a person to go blind if they stepped into direct sunlight. Painfully so......."

Sakura chuckled. "Yes, but their eyes also produce a chemical that shields their eyes from the affects of sunlight. The same chemical is what gives their eyes a characterstic white appearance. Some people who aren't from their world see the 'white eyes' and think they're dealing with somebody who's blind. If anything its the opposite. Hinata's cousin Neji is physically the stronger of the two, constantly pushing the limits of what his abilities can do. Here..... I'm calling up a demonstration on the screen there. This is Neji performing the technique 6 palms 38 trigrams rotation."

"Holy......." Gwen almost jumped back in surprise as Neji suddenly unleashed a whirling globe of energy, sending enemy projectile weapons flying. "How'd they......"

"There's one more technique, this is the Gentle Fist....... Hinata and Neji demonstrated some of the clan attacks for our database." Hinata pounded away on Neji, hand glowing with the chakra she was using. Neji held still, letting Hinata's attacks fall unchecked.

"Its not even doing anything." Martha squinted. "I can see their hands glowing but none of the attacks are connecting."

"Yes, they are." On the footage Neji stopped and pulled up his sleeve, holding his arm out for the camera. Hinata's attacks had left bruises all over his arm. "Chakra puncture anyone? Their hands weren't connecting, but the energy from it was. The gentle fist disables an opponent, eventually they become paralyzed and collapse. Chakra isn't just needed for using attack techniques, it keeps the body living. I've seen heart attack victims come back from the brink, because their chakra network was kept going even after their heart stopped. Hell, I saved one of my best friends that way while I was alive. When chakra slows in the body, or the body starts to run out of it, the affected person passes out and becomes paralyzed. Its a natural failsafe humans evolved to keep us from killing ourselves using chakra techniques. Push the right spots, chakra slows enough so that they can't get it to their body fast enough, their body thinks they're about to run out of chakra and shuts them down. And they can do this without even a single blow connecting. Laaaast. This is a computer simulation Jazra put together of what a Hyuuga can see.

"This is a human through 5 feet of solid rock. Believe it or not, that's me walking through one of the abandoned tunnels in the Cathryn Caves. Next I have........." She clicked. "My friend Katry through six feet solid titanium."

"holy....... that..... that's infrared isn't it?" Ianto asked, scrutinizing the footage more closely.

"Yeah, they can see in the infrared. Because they see chakra and heat, they can fight an opponent in total darkness. To give you an idea from your perspective, if you place Hinata's cousin Neji in the battle of Canary Warf. He'd have spotted the Cybermen in an instant, and when the action started he could have taken chunks out of them before he finally collapsed and died. The telltale power drainages caused by their activity would have been traceable to him too. The dahleks would have been beyond his ability to kill, but a Hyuuga's strength isn't their chakra, its their control over it and their ability to spot potential or hidden threats. They can identify clots or failing organs, they can find an enemy formation hidden in a building, they can spot bombs, boobytraps, and hidden escape routes in the time it takes to snap a finger.

"Hinata isn't nearly as strong as her cousin, her range is smaller, she has less chakra, she's also timid which makes her attacks weaker due to a lack of confidence. However, she has control that the others in her clan would chop off an arm to use. She can manage the rotation same as Neji, but she created a less obvious version of the technique, she practices it by standing in water and sending blips of water, splashes really, around her." Sakura called up a computer simulation. "In reality, she's flinging chakra. she just uses water to track how far her reach is and to make the technique's visible. Its like an undulating coat of spikes of chakra. In close quarters its much more useful than the rotation. Place Neji in one of the lower tunnels here at the hub, if he performed the rotation it would cause extensive damage to the surrounding area. Hinata's technique on the other hand is controlled enough that it would cause minimal damage to the same corridor."

"But that still sounds like a lot to swallow, one soldier able to tear a cyberman unit apart?" Toshiko didn't believe her ears. "I mean....."

"That's a really tough pill to swallow....." Gwen shook her head, then glanced worriedly at Ianto. When Sakura saw the look on his face, she instantly regretted using Canary Warf as an analogy. "..... it wasn't us, well it was Ianto, but Canary warf is one of the biggest trajedies in torchwood's history, and you're saying that one or two fighters would have been able to see it coming from the beginning?"

Sakura frowned, trying to find the correct words to describe it. "Because she's so shy and timid, Hinata's physical strength is limited. But some of the Ninja I've met can tear some of the bad guys you have to pieces. Hinata's ability /does/ make her capable of seeing through most shields, cloaks and holograms. Hinata, when she gets to know the members of a new team, bonds strongly with them and works strongly with them. Heart of a lion, face of a mouse. Likely she was picked for her control over her power and her ability to work with others. Also, the gatekeepers would have picked somebody who couldn't cause a large amount of collateral damage."

"Oh that's comforting......" Sakura groaned, Ianto's entire posture screamed 'shut up i hate you.' His back was turned to the others and he was staring down in his coffee cup.

"Actual /ninja/?" Owen laughed. "There's a world that's all /ninja?/ What do they fight in their pajamas or something?"

"Actually, hitaiate, kunaiproof flack jacket, open toe boots. Very stylish." Sakura grinned. "They have some of the most skilled medical professionals in the entire strand. They also wrote the book on energy or lifeforce based attacks. Everybody goes to the Ninja world for a short amount of time so that they can get a working knowledge of chakra. Its one of the skills that every apprentice gatekeeper has to learn if they want to get promoted. And the principles that the Ninja employ in their jutsu are the almost universal foundation for gatekeepers creating their own techniques." She clicked another button on her laptop, removing the Ninja data and graphs.

"But we need to move on." She tried to catch Ianto's eye in an apology, but he didn't turn around or look at her. "Next, the reserve team. You've met Orihime, let me introduce you to Aoriya. She's a dragonrider. Humans have stories of dragons, little did they know that cousins of them live way way far away on a planet known as Pern. Earthlike, but with no native sentient species, humans colonized it before they realized, way too late, that the Hoyle and Wickromansing theory was not only real, but dumping mychorizoid spores named thread onto the surface of their world periodically. To cope, they took our little friends, the firelizards and bioengineered dragons out of them. Thread doesn't eat rock, metal and water, but consumes everything carbon based. It can be killed by fire, water or nitric acid. That's why they picked dragons rather than any other possible kind of life form.

"Aoriya is rider of brown Piskerath, impressing out of Igen Weyr, she's the first woman to impress a brown dragon. EVER. Typically only female dragons impress to women. But she proved that that wasn't always the case. Piskerath's egg didn't hatch at the same time as the others, everybody was gone by the time it hatched, except for her. Piskerath literally collided with her and impressed, telepathically and empathically bonded to her. Her impression nearly caused an uproar, because Lessa, one of the most important dragonriders on Pern, made a bet with several Lord Holders and Craft Masters that women could impress to fighting dragons, thinking not blues and browns but greens. But when Sofia impressed a male dragon, blue Calficeth, and Aoriya impressed brown Piskerath, it opened a huge door in the psychological and medical view of pernese dragons. Aoriya has, however, risen to the rank of Wingleader of Niihama Weyr's largest wing, Circuit Wing, which has 35 member riders including four wingseconds.

"The important thing to remember about impression is that it cannot be reversed, and can be just as much an achilles heal as it is a strength. If, for example, Piskerath breaks an arm, Aoriya's own arm feels as if its been broken, even down to the physical pain and she loses use of it. When a female dragon gets frisky and goes into heat, its the ultimate love potion number 9, they just can't help themselves. This side effect is so strong that in the case of golden dragons, this actually causes a telepathic disturbance in the surrounding area. Because of that, dragonriders aren't typically bothered by nudity or homosexu........"

"IS THAT WHY YOU SAID YOU WEREN........." Martha turned beat red. "You said last night you were a frequent guest of Dragon Weyrs. Is THAT the only reason why you.........." She was fuming. "...... can't help themselves? I refuse to believe that. You don't just sleep with a random person, just because the dragon did what dragons do. That completely overrides consent and......."

"You have a sick, twisted dirty mind Martha Jones. I like it." Sakura teased, Martha looked ready to throw something at her. "I thought we were only sharing a bed because there was one bed. But you seem to have a......." Jack urgently made gestures behind Martha's back telling Sakura to cool it. "The explanation of dragons is REALLY long. So if you feel like sputtering in protest, or have questions about them, wait until AFTER I've finished explaining it. The other two reserve members are going to be easier to explain, so I'm getting the doozy out of the way first. But as I could have told you, it only happens with female dragons, not males like Piskerath. The female dragon takes off and flies, driven to mate. The male dragons, blue brown and bronze for the greens, bronzes and larger browns for golds, try to catch her. The rider of the dragon who gets the girl, gets the girl's rider. It /does/ violate what we normally consider consent. BUT, they've developed ways around this, everything from having their real romantic interest in the room and keeping everyone else out to specifically requesting certain male dragons to attend. In that way they pick and choose who they end up with. Typically they view mating flights like one would a one night stand. Its there, its fun, it happens, its over and its time to go back to your routine. Careful screening and medical care in the early days of Pernese society eliminated STD's, so they don't pass on illnesses by doing so. It takes serious preparation and typically female dragons are grounded when they reach their mating cycle. Therefore even if a green or gold has an errand to run here in Cardiff, there is little chance of a telepathic disturbance over the larger area. Further, handled appropriately, mating flights are actually very soothing and cathartic. Also, male dragons don't go into heat, Piskerath is a male dragon, ergo you can expect only riders of male dragons showing up, they're not going to risk an unplanned mating flight going off in an urban area.

"Dragons range in size from the size of a Utah raptor to the size of an L1011 jet. That's likely the reason why Aoriya isn't showing up until night time. The area in front of the convention center above is big enough that any of the dragons could land easily. But the only way they wouldn't be seen is the middle of the night when the area is abandoned. Now as I was about to say, the bond between dragon and rider means that both require extremely specialized medical care. Dragonhealers, doctors who specialize in dragons, have documented cases where a dragon has actually communicated a medical need through their rider's delerium. The rider senses their dragon's pain and calls out for whatever it is they need. Because of impression, and because their vital signs and physical sensations are tied into their dragon, if a rider loses their dragon they usually go into cardiac or respiratory arrest. If they survive the initial trauma a dragonrider goes through a period of near catanonic depression. They don't eat, and in extreme cases they refuse drinking or just don't respond at all. Just lie there numb and waste away. The psychological damage guerantees lasting trauma and symptoms of extreme depression even after they've returned to relatively normal mental function. However, they often turn to alcohol or drugs to try and numb the pain and usually end up turning to sex as well, trying to substitute for the intimacy they lost. By having and raising children, immersing themselves heavily in work, they subliminate their loss by distraction."

As Jack watched, Sakura's face slowly darkened, she didn't even notice it. Nightmares, sex, lots of kids, and psychological distress. The same symptoms as Sakura was describing, but no dragon. It was something to look in to. Something to find out more about. There it was, the deep inhale of breath, the resolute squaring of shoulders.

"Because of this, the role any dragonrider can play in a battle is severely limited to transport in a crisis, moving goods, people and services and Search and Rescue or patrol. Any security they provide is mainly a bluff, nobody is going to mess with a firebreathing dragon if they have another option." Sakura frowned, "But dragons have a VERY useful ability. They can travel through time. Their time traveling ability is way more limited than the Timelords. To travel from place to place, time to time, or dimension to dimension they pass through an area called 'Between.' Between is cold, its total sensory deprivation. While you're in between, the only thing you're aware of is your mind, breathing and heartbeat. A typical jump is over within 8 seconds. You count to three slowly, and on three if you've done it correctly, you're where you asked to go. This is done through telepathic visualization, right now as we speak Aoriya is likely going over a briefing about Cardiff, the surrounding area, torchwood and some of the more common aliens around here. At the end she'll be shown an aerial satilite photo of the area around the Hub from cruising altitude, by visualizing that area for Piskerath she tells him where to go.

"The problem with timing is that, when you use a dragon's ability to travel through time, there are more dangers than any other form of timetravel on record. The further back you go, the longer the jump takes. There is no AIR in between, if the jump takes too long you suffocate. Its possible to wear airtanks or an oxygen supply for longer jumps. But it also gets more difficult for the dragon to find the time you want them to go to. If it can't find the place and time you want to go, it disappears into between. It never comes back, neither do the passengers or cargo carried by it. You also can't meet yourself. If you get too close to your past self your body starts to lose strength, your chakra gets divided equally between yourself and yourself, resulting in the person in question passing out, even dying. Timejumps are calculated using the position of the stars around the target area, as are interdimensional jumps. Pictures of the stars for say...... one year ago visualized around and above the Hub will take you to the Torchwood Hub of one year ago. Pictures of the stars around the Hub tomorrow night are used for getting here in the present. This last ability is probably going to be the main reason why a dragonrider was asked to be on the reserve team. Piskerath has an amazing range when it comes to between. He always knows /when/ he is, he always knows /where/ someone is.

"A very rare ability is the ability to /hear/ a dragon's thoughts. That's how they communicate with their rider. If they /want/ to, they can talk to anyone they please. But they tend to talk to their rider, other dragons or people their rider is close to ONLY. Its extremely rare, I'm talking brothers, family, VERY attached bed partners, children of their riders. But the ability to hear all dragons regardless of who they're talking to or if they want to be heard is an extremely rare ability. There are only four people alive on Pern today who are able to do that. To give you an idea of the odds, 4 in a global population of about six million. Dragonriders are also in the minority, there are usually no more than 20,000 dragonriders alive planet wide. 15 to 25 goldriders depending on the breeding strength of the existing queens, and about 200 bronzeriders. Recently Benden's lead Queen dragon Ramoth is probably the most fertile queen out of the other Weyrs, which about doubled the existing population of breeding dragons. Hearing all dragons, abbreviated H.A.D. is that rare.

"But its more likely to occur in people who have used any form of telepathy or telepathy based technology. If any of you have used that, I need to know NOW. Because it means you could be vulnerable to telepathic and empathic broadcasts from the dragon, including but not limited to the mating lust, panic, pain, anger or any other form of extreme emotion." Sakura warned them. "Okay, whatever questions or outbursts you may have been sitting on, go. And please, answer my question......"

Toshiko slowly turned ashen, her ears turning pink. "I did....... I used a pendant that let me hear people's thoughts."

"When Piskerath shows up, if you hear him speaking to Aoriya, tell me, immediately. Any /other/ questions?"

"Did you ever have a dragon?" Jack asked, a mild expression on his face. It was an innocent, but definately probing question.

"Its not a good idea for a shinketsu to impress. It means that when I die I'd have to live for centuries with debilitating depression and pain. I'd love to bring you guys to a dragon hatching sometime to watch. They treat it like sporting events, complete with a gallery to watch from."

"How does that work? Impression I mean, how do they choose?" Owen asked. He leaned forwards in his chair, "I mean, becoming a dragonrider comes with huge risks. If they instinctively pick who they want, does that mean people in the galleries are safe?"

"There have been gallery impressions, but usually they only happen once a generation. There are certain things that they look for, enhanced empathy, personality, but there are several ways to predict what will impress with whom. Nobody who's impressed a dragon has been over 25 in age, and typically the ability to impress a dragon disappears after age 20. If you've gone through medical school, odds are a dragon won't be hunting you down any time soon. For people who don't age, like Jack, the age they were when their aging stopped determines if they're able to. Jack you were?"

"Hmmm........ I don't really remember." Jacks' eyes twinkled. "But if they do pick people at random, you could always be lying. You seem to know a lot about the subject, and you said to Martha you were the frequent guest of dragonweyrs."

"Were you lying about not remembering?"

"Yes, but you haven't answered me directly." Jack told her. "Of course, if you don't want to talk about it, I can shut up."

"Then just shut up." Sakura told him. "You lie about what happened to you all the time. I can lie about me. Toshiko, if you hear Piskerath, please tell me immediately. We'll be going topside to meet them. The other two reserve members, Martel and Raito. Martel is what we call a human chimera. She's from Edwards world. Nine times out of ten, a human chimera is the way they are against their will. They're a cross between a human and an animal, forced through Alchemy. Its one of three forbidden forms of human alchemy along with bringing the dead back to life and performing a soul attachment. Martel is crossed with a snake, giving her heightened senses and extreme flexibility. I'm serious. She's physically very strong, and a snake's heat sensing ability manifests in an uncanny sense for those who are approaching. You can't easily creep up on her. She's kinda quiet, very intense, but not particularly hard to get to know or work with."

"Light...... or as he's called now Raito Yagami is a transplant from his own dimension into the Naruto world. He's the same age I am, exactly. We're seperated by a matter of months. When Light was human he found an artifact called a Deathnote. A nikkisashi, a book and brush shinigami can handle one harmlessly, but for almost any other species its like putting on the One Ring in Lord of the Rings. You go nuts really quick. Light's human self went psychotic, after witnessing an attempted rape, he used the Deathnote to kill the man attacking. You write a person's name in the Deathnote and they die inside of fourty seconds. A skilled Deathnote user can control a person's death within 23 days. One lunar month. After that, he started using it to kill as many criminals as he could. When Interpol sent the famous detective, Ryuuzaki L after him and the two met, it simply furthered Light's drop into insanity. He was nicknamed 'Kira' Japanese for Killer. There was a brief period of sanity, really only a few months, where Light lost his memories of being Kira and fell in love with Ryuuzaki. When he got his memories of being Kira back, Light's mind was clear for just a bit, but then he tried to use the deathnote to kill Ryuuzaki, the shinigami called Rem, and Ryuuzaki's assistant Watari in one fell swoop. Off the record? He failed. Part of why I feel so horrible about that incident is that our plans to remove Ryuuzaki from his world counted entirely on Light attacking him with the deathnote. I had to goade him into attacking somebody he loved. And when Light finally died I was the one who flung his soul into Hueco Mundo. After the attempted kill, we left Gigai in place of Watari and Ryuuzaki and fake shinigami remains behind for Rem. But Ryuuzaki /had/ to have one used on him. There was no way we could fake that. Ryuuzaki technically died, but at the time I had complete control over water. The human body is mostly water. So I actually controlled the water in Ryuuzaki's body, using it to force his heart to beat and his lungs to function. Afterwards, Light didn't even resist the psychosis caused by the Deathnote. He continued a reign of terror until in the year 2012 he made the mistake of tangling with L's successor, an introverted, and some say aspergers boy with snow white hair named Near. Near found Light and he fell on his sword, Light screwed up and Near proved beyond a shadow of a doubt what Light had been up to. Likewise, Light failed to take into account the shinigami whom the deathnote belonged to, because Ryuk, that was his name, had a spare deathnote. He used it to kill Light. When he kept the Deathnote at the beginning, part of his bargain with Ryuk was that the shinigami could kill him any time he pleased. The gatekeepers then purposefully chucked Light's soul into Hueco Mundo, right into the Menos forest."

"Centuries later, an extremely angst ridden arrancar version of Light came out of a cocoon in Grimmjow's Arrancar Dynasty. There he rose to the rank of Quinta Espada. The 5th Espada. Espada Light got sucked into an interdimensional timerift. He fell backwards in time to the present, along with an arrancar incarnation of his accomplice, Misa Amane. THAT Raito begged me to protect Ryuuzaki, the one man he loved the most. He invoked his right to a Last Wish, and human ghost or hollow, a shinigami has to obey a spirit who makes a last wish. Its like the Miranda Right of the shinigami. Raito made a deal with the God of Time. He could stay in the present as long as he didn't interfere with any fixed events he had knowledge of from his time, and he could ONLY stay as long a Ryuuzaki was alive. Espada Raito was as desperate to be with Ryuuzaki as a dragonless man is anguished over his loss. A small percentage of male arrancar, those who are especially effeminate or graceful in appearance, or who have compatible anatomy (meaning their hollow hole can't be in their abdomen), and who have a high enough level of spiritual energy. Raito has all three needed requirements /and/ is one of the small percentage who can get pregnant. He was purposefully careless, doing his darndest hardest to get pregnant on purpose. He was so scared he was going to lose Ryuuzaki that he wanted kids by him, and hid his condition as best he could until I'd been assigned as a body guard to Ryuuzaki. His twin children ended up falling into a timerift as well. It was all I could do to keep Light's status as Kira a secret /and/ keep him from killing Ryuuzaki.

"Since then, Raito has been living in Konohagakure in Tsunade's good graces. He and Ryuuzaki are going through training to be accepted as a genin, because they have an equivalency test for gatekeepers. Raito can be considered to be on probation, he's signed the Kali Blood Pact, meaning that he has restraints on his wrist that will activate the instant he touches a Deathnote. He is still an expert in surveillance, espianage, and assasination. And I still hate his guts. Though he has more than enough reason to hate mine as well. However, I don't think he should be handled with kid gloves. He's strong enough that when he releases his zanpakuto he can take down enemy air or spaceships easily. Like me, he has a gigai. And having once been both a hollow /and/ a psychotic killer, he's got a unique insight into the darker side of human nature."

"But wouldn't he have been taken by the gates of hell you mentioned earlier?" Gwen had caught on to that quickly.

"He would have, except for one rule. If you use a deathnote you can't go to heaven or hell. The gates of hell simply wouldn't have appeared. If you use one there are only three places you go when you die, Summerland, in which case he'd be gone by mine and his native era. He could have gone to Soul Society, but we decided that was too risky. He could sneak his way into the seireitei as a shinigami academy student and caused trouble. Sending him to the Menos forest was the only surefire way to ensure his soul wouldn't come back to haunt us until he'd fully cooled down from the 'Kira Years.' By now he's pretty safe to be around, compared to the other arrancar. But he's got his nasty moments."

"The last reserve team member is Orihime, whom you've met already. So that covers everybody." And Sakura had finished three cups of coffee, a bagel, and three doughnuts by the time she was done. "But I could use a catchup on what's going on around the hub, so I'll have Jack give me a 50 cent tour if you don't mind?" She asked, pushing the Torchwood captain towards an isolated corridor.

"If you insist....." He shook his head and followed her to the conferance room. "So." He said when they were out of earshot. "You never answered me right out about having a dragon." Sakura glared at him, if looks could kill Jack would be screaming on the floor in agony. "All the signs are there, promiscuity, nightmares, depression and irritability. I think you scared Owen half to a second death when you did that. You were talking about when you died right? Septic bite?"

"Septic sword, that's even more painful. If you breathe a WORD of this to the other people at the hub, I will kill you over and over until I'm satisfied that I've hurt you enough." Sakura growled. "And for your information, I WAS the dragon." She closed the distance between them. "I thought I'd healed, and I thought wrong. Last night, I dreamed about the three most painful memories I've ever endured. I was married to the two most beautiful women I knew, and was linked to them in the SOUL. Just the way dragons and riders are. Major died, and so did ZP, within 48 hours of each other. I was writhing in Konohagakure's ICU for 72 hours alternating between respiratory and cardiac distress and catatonic depression. I had Sakura Haruno, Jazra, Delphine, Tsunade, Hinata, Orihime and yeah, Raito and Ryuuzaki, alternating watch on me 24/7. I wanted to DIE. The only reason why I never attempted suicide was because I knew that if I succeeded it would do no good. I'd be a full fledged shinigami, the last SHRED of me left after I lost ZP and Major would be gone. I'd lose the last of my humanity, and as much as I wanted oblivion it wasn't worth the price. And the remnants of the war we'd just finished fighting were still out there. I had to get up and keep fighting. But for weeks after I survived I refused to leave my bed. I ate because I was hungry, I drank because I was thirsty. Alcohol numbed the pain. They wouldn't give me fellis because an overdose can cause cardiac damage, it was a suicide risk. I slept with whichever of my friends were willing to let me into their bed, using gatekeeper forms of contraceptive to keep from getting knocked up and forming the same bond that caused the problem in the first place."

The closer and closer Sakura got to Jack, the more tears sprung to her eyes. Her knees did, indeed, start to weaken until finally she pulled out a chair at the confrence room table and fell into it. "Szayel Apollo Grantz, Octava Espada, was looking for anything our unnamed traitor might have left behind. I got pissed, in police work they call it tunnel vision, focusing on just one suspect because of a personal trauma or vendetta. Szayel had armed his zanpakuto with a solution of bacteria that would make a victim go into septic shock in under an hour. I finally cornered him in an abandoned quarry in Sinnoh, a world and region that I loved, that was close to my heart just from the raw beauty of it. I was pissed as hell, he was searching for something that he had no right to take, no right to bring back into the light. He was violating my place, a place I loved! I had a holy beast, the dragon of water Seiryuu, sealed into my soul, and as a shinigami I had a natural resistance to injury and disease. I slew Szayel," Sakura gulped, the tears falling from a terrifyingly numb face. "But when the battle ended, septic shock set in from the bacteria. The battle had spread it into my system at an abnormally fast speed. By the time my friends got to me, I was gone. I remember who came to get me too. Urahara, Byakuya, Jazra, Temari, Sakura, Raito and Ryuuzaki."

Jack pulled up a seat next to Sakura, but he stayed silent, listening. He acted cocky and careless, but he sympathized a lot with Sakura. He'd been killed enough times to know how painful dying was, and if there was one thing he knew how to do, it was listen. Sakura inched her chair closer, just leaning against him, physical contact with anyone right then a comfort. And there was something in Jack that she trusted, there was something in him that inspired trust.

"The sky was blue, and the sun was warm and the stone beneath me was cool to the touch. My mind wouldn't work, I was so tired, so weak, but peaceful. Every burden I had taken on as a human was gone, my left arm was flesh and blood once more. My hair was no longer singed black, but the same brilliant gold it had been when I was first chosen as a gatekeeper. I didn't have a dragon spirit sealed into my body and I couldn't hear the constant humming and chattering of the computers I worked with echoing into my mind. My eyes were brilliant green again, not frosted with electrical damage. All I could think was........ god its over. I'm free. Take me away."

"last night..... I.............. I dreamed about it. Everything, losing Major and ZP, my own death. Part of the reason why I asked to travel with Doctor was so I could get my memories of being human back. I asked..... after we'd originally made our bargain for him to take watches with Delphine. After 500 years as a shinigami my memories of being alive were starting to disappear. I knew facts, names, faces, statistics, but I couldn't connect a fact to an image, or a place. I couldn't breathe life into the names and faces that I mentioned or looked at in photo albums and file dossiers. I knew statistics for the battles I'd faught, but the memories, the movement maps used to track battle patterns after the fact, they became empty images. I didn't /FEEL/ them. When I got here, what I didn't realize was that when you cross your timeline, sometimes flashbacks happen. It all rushed back the instant I lay down to sleep, every single.......... iota of pain. I screamed and hurt and my soul writhed. The circumstances were different, but the symptoms a dragonless man or woman experiences after they recover are the same. When I met him, Doctor praised all the work I'd done. You know how he is, admiring historical figures from afar. I told him to stop right there, all the changes that I'd done as a shinigami captain in the Soul Society were out of grief. He shouldn't praise them, just watch them, accept them as work done for the greater good, and if he wanted to he could interpret them as miracles. But something made out of grief doesn't deserve praise."

For a long time Jack didn't say anything, and Sakura could have fallen asleep right then and there, leaning against him at the confrence table. But at last he said quietly, "I think, you landed yourself in the one place in this..... multiverse, that you travel where you can heal, mentally, spiritually and physically."

"you're not going to say anything else?" Sakura asked, she sounded exhausted.

"Do I have to?" He asked with a small smile crossing his face. "It puts a few things in perspective, and it gives me a better appreciation of what you went through. Some things don't need saying. Everybody who comes through here, who has served here at Hub 3, has their own baggage, their own issues. It takes awhile, but eventually they trust each other."

Sakura took deep breaths, counting to three before she let each out. "I'd better get up."

"And I should give you that tour. Wanna check on Donna and Orihime?"

"Sure." The shinigami smiled warmly. "Lead the way. I hope they're both doing alright in there."

* * *

**GATEKEEPER ENCYCLOPEDIA!**

Urahara watches as Sarah Jane and K-9 fiddle with the monitor. "Is it ready to go?"

"I think so. k-9?"

"Screen is operating at optimal condition Mistress, please be more careful with your equipment."

"My fault K-9" Urahara calls out. "My experiment got out of control."

"A famous scientist should operate his equipment with more care." K-9 rolls away and Urahara aherms.

"RANKS!" Urahara raps the screen with a pointer.

"The gatekeepers are organized into an apprentice, journeyman, master system, and their cousins, the Valkire, are organized according to 'initiate' 'adept' and 'capable.'" Urahara unrolls a chart. "For the gatekeepers we use the same terms as the ninja of Naruto."

_Genin=Apprentice_

_Chuunin=Journeyman_

_Jounin=Master_

"The Gatekeepers are very Japanese aren't they?" Sarah Jane asks.

"Indeed, though there are plenty of worlds that aren't anime. You know when she was sixteen Sakura actually beat a Wraith dart in a dogfight." Sarah Jane gawks, as Urahara shows a screenshot of the battle. "First time she was able to fly in humanoid form."

"So is that it?"

"Course not!" Urahara grins and pulls out another chart. "Each well staffed gatekeeper world typically has three ranks. Coming right up....."

_Head Jounin ------- Head Valkire ---------- Training Master_

"Those are pretty straightforward nei Sumisu-chan?" Urahara points. "Now watch this." Draws on the chart with a brush.

_Head Jounin (Roy Mustang, Kakashi Hatake, Seth Nightroad) ------- Head Valkire (Daisuke Aramaki) ---------- Training Master _

_Heads of safehouses, Adjutant Divisions, Bases and Organizations_

_Urahara+Yoruichi (Easling House) Aoi (Section 9 Adjutant Division) Astraea (Charmed House) Hitsugaya+Edward (Torchwood 3 Adjutant Division) Dante (Full Metal House) Julia (Red Shield Gatekeeper Infirmary) Judy (Bey Station Administration Post) Cardinal Caterina Sfverza (AX Adjutant Division and Administration Post) ????????? (Canyon One Training Center) ?????????? (Eterna Forest Science Center and Observatory) (others.......)_

_/ | \_

_Jounin Crones/Sages Training Specialty Jounin and Chuunin_

_Chuunin Other valkire First Year Genin and Initiates | _

_Genin \ |_

_Special or Secret projects and classified or sensitive trainees_

"Even more straight fowards. But what about gatekeepers like Donna?" Sarah Jane indicates the screen, showing Donna powering up a chidori from the previous fic "Distress call" "How come she was kept so secret?"

"Donna goes under the 'special projects.' I'll show you why with the next one! Here we go!" Clicks on the screen.

**Governing bodies!**

"What's that about?" The companion turns to look up at the unfurling chart. "you're telling me Donna gets to be so h..... oh my."

"I'm not sure if you've met the good folks of the world Cephiro Sarah Jane, but the Astralgator is the gatekeeper's strongest leader. Very much the Pillar of the gatekeepers. Her name is never released, her identity never made known. And yet she manipulates everything from the shadows. The Astralgator is always the female gatekeeper with the highest level of spiritual energy. She's chosen by Benten, and must sadly have her staff rush around and do things for her.

_Astralgator (???????)_

_/ / | \ \ \_

_Command Officer Communications Officer Training Officer Supply Officer Intelligence Officer Technology Officer _

_Rei Ironcrow Belili Lillywrath Aleser Starlion | Diana Pulsari (currently vacant) _

_Supply Staff (armorers, equipment manufactuers, food/clothing, ecetera)_

_Command Staff Comm room staff (Lirael) Training Staff/Professors (Gabraiel, Lord Kuze, Deunan, Prof Oak Rowen Elm Birch and Ivy and others)_

"Wow." Sarah Jane dodges a falling chart. "That's big! What are all the gaps?"

"Well....... the snowflake's doings are so secret that nobody knows everything that they get up to. Lets just say that they're more cloak and dagger than the most cloak and daggery thing you've ever seen." Urahara beams. "Just wait until you see these."

**Shield Council and Savants!**

Urahara grins evilly. "This is where Donna is, and that's why the gatekeepers are going to all that trouble." He explains. "Donna of this time is in line to be another shield council member when her seal finally breaks. That's why Timelord Donna went completely rogue and that's why she was near hysterical. Noble-chan was cooped up on Shield station for 500 years. That'll drive anyone nuts!"

"Oh dear."

Urahara pulls down a chart. "Here we go." He explains. "We've already met the Astralgator, but she's not alone. Sarah Jane, do you know what a Savant is?"

Sarah Jane frowns. "Medically, a savant is somebody who has incredible talent and dedication at one thing, but is defficient, even crippled in ordinary life. Things like music or art or story telling. Its a mental condition, it can be very difficult to...."

Urahara grins. "A gatekeeper Savant is the same except with their powers. A Savant is the living representative of a god or goddess, and thier powers will be exceedingly strong concerning a technique that is 'aligned' with their chosen deity. But a majority of their other gatekeeper techniques are extremely weak."

**Astralgator/Savants**

_Ryuuzaki is Savant for Somnis, the Roman god of sleep. As such his psychic and hypnotic techniques, divinatory abilities as well. His combat style tends to rely on a mixture of trickery and capoeira strikes, with heavy use of Genjutsu and energy attacks. Attack Nature: Mind/Attack Class: Savant _

_Jenny is Savant for Chronos, the Greek God of Time. However, as she was bioengineered to be a soldier and as she is newly tapped to the honor, the bent her attack techniques take remains to be seen. Attack Nature: Time/Air/Attack Class: Savant Legendary Pokemon Summons: Dialga (artifact Red Chain)_

Sarah Jane shakes her head. "You gatekeepers are so ritualized. An excess of pomp and circumstance." She rolls her eyes and turns to Urahara.

"Oh you should see our equivalent of parlament." Urahara beams. "Right here." He smirks. "And I promise you, they do not act anywhere /near/ their ages!"

**Shield Council**

The Shield Council consists of 2 representatives from each world. A lot of, ithese have a position elsewhere in the strand. But a good many of them never leave shield station. And the risk for assasination is high. Several of the representatives have disappeared or faked their deaths in order to erase all traces of them entering the station. The shield council acts in the case of emergencies and sweeping actions regarding a world, large organization, or highly influential person. They also influence the formation of some policies and authorize the use of mass force.

The Siege of Las Estrellas, in which Sakura slew Kaname tousen was a major example. Aizen had begun experimenting on the souls of dead children. The Shield Council moved to Derank, Shackle AND world shackle Aizen. He lost all rank and the ability to travel between worlds. They can order everything from the "Quarantine" of worlds who are embroiled in conflict to the use of mass force. The general rule is that if it affects one world or more, its a matter for the shield council to decide.

Known members!

_**Seth Nightroad:** One of the earliest representatives that Sakura and her original team met. Seth Nightroad is the emperess of Trinity Blood's New Human Empire. (Or the empire for short.) Even by gatekeeper standards, Seth Nightroad leads a double life. She hides her gatekeeping abilities from her fellow vampires (though this might eventually change), holds Head Jounin position for her world (and hides being shield council from most of her gatekeeping staff.)_ Firelizard: Green Vale Pokemon: Black dragonite (???)

_**Washu:** The frisky (and short!) pink haired goddess and self proclaimed universe's greatest genius of Tenchi Muyo, Washu is the Shield Council rep with the most work on her plate. Since they currently do not have a "Technology Officer" on the Astralgator's staff, and ZP is frequently out in the field with Sakura and her friends, Washu takes on the bulk of the technology related workload. Washu is the one who got Urahara onto the station as staff, mainly to jerk Donna out of her boredom. She assists in the founding of Easling house and considers the Whoverse safehouse to be a pleasant and more calming atmosphere than the station. And has more than once gone partying or splurging in nearby London._

_**Watari/Quilish Wammy:** Presumed dead in his world along with Ryuuzaki and the shinigami Rem, Watari previously held the rank of head archivist, a rank he held under the command of the intelligence and communications divisions of the Astralgator. Watari rarely leaves shield station anymore, prefering the tranquility of the metal halls and the hypnotic whirl of the wormhole above to the hustle and bustle of the gatekeepers planetside. Watari also has the care and custody of the Kali Blood Pact, a massive cursed scroll upon which is the name of every villain or criminal mastermind ever to wield a key. As the Kali Blood Pact is an important ritual item, his quiet guardianship is often underestimated._

_**Rem:** Watari and Ryuuzaki's would be killer, Rem's cooperation and acting skills were paramount in removing Ryuuzaki and Watari from danger from Kira. After she left her world, Rem desired no more than to live and die a human. Urahara gave her an untracable gigai, which slowly turned her into a human. Rem's abilities mainly concern hypnosis and healing, with a few high powered energy attacks into the mix. While she is still alive in this timeline, Rem sacrificed herself years later after Light and Misa's souls were thrown into Hueco Mundo and both of them became hollows. Misa had been nearly eaten by other hollows, and moments from Death Rem gave the last measure of devotion for the one day Espada. She let Misa eat her, giving Misa the ability to heal herself and caused her defensive abilities to skyrocket._

_**Donna Noble:** 500 years forwards Donna is going stircrazy on shield station, fully fitting the gatekeeper saying "When your shield becomes your prison." When the Doctor's seal broke, it transformed her into a timelord, permanently. However, shield station, where she lives, prevents the Timelord's ability to telepathically sense each other's proximity. Donna was screaming in her dreams for Doctor to find her, and he couldn't hear her. The powers that be decided at last that enough was enough when it was discovered that Aizen had mounted a hitherto unknown assault on the WHOverse with Cardiff of 2008 as the front line. During the battle that followed, Donna charged Gin using Chidori 1,000 birds, an electrical jutsu that causes tunnel vision in its user. Taking advantage of the situation, Stark blindsided Donna, and the injuries were so severe that it resulted in her regenerating. At the time of this chapter she's recouperating in Torchwood 3's infirmary, but is not yet strong enough to get out of bed. Firelizard: Blue Bit Legendary Pokemon Summons: Celebi (artifact Timeflute)_

Urahara snaps his pointer off. "I think that's about it. Sumisu-chan, you were going to make tea? Sumisu-chan? Sumisu-chan?"

Sarah Jane has been buried under a pile of charts. .?????

Urahara: Oh my. Remind me to have Washu digitize these? It will save space. Poor Sumisu-chan.


	4. New Neighbors! the Torchwood Adjutant!

Urahara: I'm Kisuke Urahara, co host of Gatekeeper encyclopedia!

Sarah Jane: And I'm Sarah Jane smith, co host of Gatekeeper encyclopedia!

Urahara and Sarah Jane: Due to the massive length of this chapter and the wealth of information already available on gatekeepers in it. We're going to skip Gatekeeper Encyclopedia for this Chapter.

Urahara: But we'll be back in the next chapter. _Demon Dog! Echos of the Master_!

Sarah Jane: So stay tuned! Next week we'll be joined by Gin Ichimaru, and hear what /he/ has to say for himself!

* * *

The infirmary was quiet, Orihime had curled up in a ball with an empty food tray by her bed. Sakura heard on her right, "She had french toast with whipped cream and bean paste _and_ chocolate syrup. Don't ask me how she ate something so disgusting." Donna groaned. "If I said I didn't feel sick watching I'd be lying."

"You still can't get up?" Jack asked worriedly.

"I'm absolutely exhausted. I can sit up to eat, I can stand to go to the bathroom. When I get back to my bed my body is completely drained." She sighed. "Before he left, Doctor told me about a ritual they had back on Galifrey. A........ a young timelord was lead to a portal that acts as a window into time. It produces either eternal inspiration, eternal cowardice, or eternal madness. That's why he and Master are so strong, and why any further generation of timelords will be weaker than the others. Doctor and Master can recover from regeneration relatively quickly, Jenny and I will take awhile."

"That's alright, something tells me you're glad to be down here." Sakura chuckled.

"Oh yeah. Forget shield station, I don't want to go back there for a looooong while." Donna chuckled. "You think you can bring me up to date with what's happened while I've been..... gone...." A grin crossed her face as she slowly shifted upright. It was obvious now just how hard it was for her to stay sitting.

"You know, you look cuter that way." Sakura chuckled, pulling up a chair. "You look like hell."

Donna shuddered. "I think it was worse on Orihime. Of course, there are techniques to do the same thing that would have killed her. I didn't even think she had enough strength to bring Owen back to life like that." Donna eyed the redhead across the room. "It must be some kind of weird Timelord thing, but thinking of what she can do, something in me just starts to shake."

"And now Owen is back to being his typical snarky self." Jack chuckled. "I didn't even believe what I was seeing. And she deflected a blast like that from hitting the tardis. She's really going to be on your reserve team?"

"Not /my/ team, Hitsugaya's. And yeah, Orihime's got more punch in her than she realizes. Her girlfriend Tatsuki must be worried about her." Sakura sighed. "Donna, are you going to be strong enough to go topside tonight?"

"I don't think so no, you'll have to introduce me to Hitsugaya after."

"You know, somehow that form suits you better than the last one." Jack eyed Donna in amusement. "You always seemed the curly hair type."

Donna started laughing, and Sakura could tell that this wasn't something she normally did, "you should laugh more, it sounds pretty."

"Really? I never really noticed...... I guess, while I was here I kinda forgot how to live. Its a weird feeling. Until I met Doctor, life was just....." She made a phhft noise. "I didn't think anybody cared, and I felt like a complete and total screw up. Then I went up to shield station, and suddenly the last of my mind that was human got bulldozed out of the way. Its like there are..... two of me. Part of me thinks back on being human, the other falls into the..... the timelord I became. Its..... weird.... and I don't even want to talk about it either."

Sakura smiled. "There are some things I can't bring myself to talk about either. Even 500 years after the fact. I think some things are just.... so beyond our psyche that we can't even talk about them. They sink in, and because they're something painful or something humiliating or something that frightens you, you just can't talk about them."

"I heard about Dex, I'm sorry. That must have really hurt, and...... I think it was incredible that you fought back. It didn't /do/ anything, but fighting back is...... well....... its a good thing. I think I'd have curled up in bed and never........"

"Donna just shut up." Sakura's shoulders fell.

"Dex, that's the name of the creature who......" Jack began, having listened in to Sakura telling Martha about her life, including the rape that had nearly killed her and caused Sakura's first child to have been stillborn. "....... sorry, I shouldn't say anything."

"I can't wait until tonight. I have to hide who I am, more or less, but I won't feel as lonely. and I don't think I could manage /just/ being the only gatekeeper here." Sakura sighed.

But she had to, there were reports to coordinate, and she had to train Lilly to recognize rift energy. She took the tiny pokemon through the vault down below where captured aliens were kept. The riolu proved to be terrified of Weevils, the captured one kept down below snarled at her and she bolted. So after dinner, Sakura picked out some of the less dangerous artifacts to come through the rift and hid them around the hub, then had Lilly use her ability to sense aura to find them. She did this perfectly, in less than an hour. The exercise ended in the infirmary, where Lilly climbed into the hospital bed with Donna, curled up like a kitten, and fell asleep.

Then Owen and Martha wanted to have a look at the contents of her first aid kit, so Sakura explained the process to synthesize Numbweed. The chemically synthesized version was known loosely as "Zapweed." It was a topical anesthetic that was very common elsewhere in the strand, but not in areas in the 'modern' era such as Cardiff. One had to be carefull in handling it, because if it got smeared on the face or lips or eyes, one could expect to be numb for hours. Not a pretty sight. Fellis juice had to be carefully monitored, because it was a narcotic, so it could be addictive, and because it caused strain on the heart. But it was a common form of sedation or anesthesia, used also for extreme sleep disorders. Fellis juice should never be used on firelizards, dragons or whers, as it was poisonous to them. Redwort was an antiseptic, pretty standard, but had the added quality of reducing the effects of numbweed on a surgeon's hands. It left a characteristic red stain on the skin, which meant that you could tell easily when it had been used all over.

Then there was making sure the data that had been left on her laptop was uploaded to Torchwood's databanks. Toshiko wanted to organize it, it saved explanations later. It also gave them an idea what sort of customs and courtesy gatekeepers followed. "You could actually control a computer with your mind?" Toshiko looked skeptical, but Sakura explained about Technopathy, the ability to telepathically control computers. She explained also about Niihama's cybernetics, and why Section 9 was so necessary. They served a similar purpose as Torchwood, except for Cyberterrorism and rogue AI's.

And finally the clock approached midnight. "Alright, they should be coming soon. The lift should be sufficiant." So Sakura stepped onto the elevator lift with Jack, and pretty soon they were ascending into the air. Sakura shifted her new outfit around her. She'd substituted her haori for a sleeveless black leather coat. The area badge for Torchwood was on the right front shoulder. A new rank braid sewn to the seam at the right shoulder. A black leather belt, the sky blue design on the buckle marking her as a jounin. A master gatekeeper.

As soon as the lift had reached the surface, Sakura stepped off. She raised her face to the night breeze and breathed in the night air. Then she reached for her shinigami cellphone. "Capain Hitsugaya, this is Torchwood 3, are you enroute?"

"Captain Hitsugaya here, we're a little late, but yeah. Odds are your backup will be here before us. We're just over a ten minute walk. I'm having blaziken send up a fireball to show you where we are."

Seconds later, about three miles off, a single fireblast rose into the air. "Smart, using that technique it looks like a firework, not a fireball." Sakura tapped her foot. "Roger Shiro-chan. Hurry the hell up."

"its HITSUGAYA!" Sakura laughed.

A burst of cold air above rushed down, blasting the team with ice cold air. **I am piskerath, piskerath. I am piskerath.**

Gwen froze, listening to the clarion bugle that echoed through her head and the responding call of the rider. **Darling, there is no watch dragon here to challenge you.**

**But there are aircraft yes? What if one of them thinks I'm an enemy?**

**They can't hear you, Piskerath. They use a different way to communicate.**

**Oh, like the headsets the man in green uses?**

**Yes, and may I never have to stand at Gai's door again!**

**He is energetic. That is good. but must he...... smile so much? It is disturbing!**

Gwen's eyes turned vacent, the muscles in her body tensing. **Darn, which building are we looking for?**

**The between picture said a golden dome.**

She looked up. **He can't see us? We're standing right out in plain sight, we aren't on the lift pad so he should be able to see us.**

**Who is that down there?** A rich, gentle tenor thought into her mind.

**Wait, did I just think that? **Gwen wondered. **How could they have heard that?**

"I don't hear anything, but our sensors went off when that blast of chill air came in." Toshiko was saying.

"You're sure? No sign of telepathy?"

"Trust me, I know what telepathy sounds like." Toshiko searched the skies. "I'm not 'hearing' anything. Here we go, its too dark to see but the infrared shows a large flying body. Wings, talons, head. We have our dragon."

"Can he see us down here?" Owen squinted, shielding his eyes.

"Oh for petes sake. He can't see us down here." Martha sighed, "Ianto, the flashlight." Taking the flashlight, Martha held it up and turned it on. She waved it skyward for about a minute.

Gwen heard a I** see glowlight! Down we go!** The dragon said happily. There was a second rush of air, and suddenly a massive chocolate and caramel brown head was arched down to view the humans below it. Faceted eyes like gems whirled in blue and green. A gentle touch connected to Gwen's mind, probing the newcomer, amusement, curiousity, a warm greeting. The head was connected to a neck, then a massive torso with the legs crouched down for its passengers to disembark.

"Holy....."

"I told you they were big Owen."

"He's cute."

"Ahv come to meet a Captain Harkness?" Aoriya slipped down the side of Piskerath's neck, landing with a grunt. Her telgari accent mixed with the yawl of Igen and Keroon holds.

"That's me." Jack strode forward, offering a hand in greeting.

"Aoriya, brown Piskerath's. Wingleader of Circuit Wing at Niihama Weyr." Aoriya was something else, heavy in bust, wide in hip, she was wearing the wherhide flight armor of a dragonrider, the wingleader's knot, weyr and wing badge displayed on its shoulder. "Hey guys! come on down. I'll help you."

"No need." A woman's voice. "Martel, people misspell my name all the time." A woman with short blonde hair, the right side of Martel's face and right shoulder were covered in tattoos. She was wearing a tattered version of the Amestrian military coat, but it was clearly just for ornamentation and protection against between, because she quickly slipped it off. Her outfit was like a female version of Jack's but butchered. A black tanktop with a harness for gear and weapons taking the place of suspenders. The pants were the same, but that was the only other simularity. As she stepped into the light, Martel's eyes glittered yellow green, the same slits as a snake.

Light slipped from the dragon's neck. "Martel is an unusual name. Raito Yagami, Quinta Espada." Light had changed outfits since the last time Sakura had seen him. He was wearing white robes, the reverse shohaksho of an espada, but with the addition of a sigil with a red moon pierced by a sword. He wore the open toe boots of a shinobi rather than the tatami of an arrancar. But his outfit resembled a neater version of Grimmjow's. The Hakama was simple, billowing as he watched. he walked. No looser than a shinigami's. But the shirt was simple, long and billowy and loose. It tied at the base of the throat, the first four buttons clasping the garment together. His gigai didn't have a mask, or a hollow hole. But the tattoo for '5' was clearly visible above where his hollow hole would be. And this Light's hair wasn't the tawny brown, it was deep, deep crimson red. His eyes were a crystal, ethereal deep blue. His zanpakuto was a rapier, with a tassle of black feathers and a bell at the end. There was, however, one change, that Sakura noticed immediately.

"You have a hitaite." Sakura noticed immediately. "Greetings Espada Raito. Mori, Mori Leigh Johnson." She bowed politely to Aoriya. "Torchwood's duties to Niihama and her queens."

"Niihama's duties to yours." Aoriya returned. "Oh where /is/ Hitsugaya."

Piskerath had been staring at Gwen the whole time, the brown seemed bored with everyone else. "Okay, that's creepy he's starin at me." Gwen edged away from the brown.

"Aw, he does that. Normally with people he wants to search, but there's no queen on the grounds at Niihama. And no offense lady, but you're way too old for Search."

**You can hear me?** Piskerath cocked his head at Gwen. She gulped, freezing. Her eyes turned blank as the dragon's mental laughter echoed through her mind. **I can tell, you can.** Piskerath chuffed in a noise that sounded like laughter, the brown giving Gwen a gentle nudge. **Don't worry, your secret is safe with me.**

He moved down the line, inspecting each in turn. "Don't worry, he's getting a good look at each of you. This way he can find you again." Aoriya said boredly.

Piskerath gave Jack an experimental prod, cocking his head to scrutinize the Torchwood Captain. Ianto got a huff, a sniff, and then a snort, ruffling his hair. Owen was bolder, reaching out to stroke Piskerath's head. The brown pushed up under his arm, a nudge to the chest and a faint croon. **I do not understand, he has been between, he has stayed between, and now he is back from between?** Piskerath jerked back, scrutinizing him carefully. Toshiko was given a glance, just the faintest glance, before Piskerath bent to eye Sakura. **Mori..... forest...... Torchwood, interesting.**

"Gwen? You alright?" Jack asked.

"Me, yeah, I'm fine." Gwen lied hurriedly. **How come I'm hearing you and not Tosh? **

**You are....... of old blood. You can hear us naturally, even if you are incapable of any other form of telepathy. **

"OYE! Over here!" Edward called as Hitsugaya's group approached. "Sorry about that. I just...... hate........ the...... uniform!" Edward was dressed in the male uniform for the Amestrian state military. "Colonel Bastard made me wear the formal uniform. Its wool, its heavy, it itches!"

"I told him we had to wear formal dress uniform for our native worlds. He can wear his normal coat next time." Hitsugaya scolded. "Besides, blue looks better on you."

Ed stuck out his tongue. "har, just shut up. I look like him." Jack was wearing his military coat. "I prefer red, it makes a better statement."

Arina sighed, and knocked both their heads together. "There we go. That takes care of that." She grinned in apology. "I apologize, those two bicker like old men. I'm Arina, and my friend here is Blaziken." Blaziken bent down to eye the gathered Torchwood members, all six feet of him.

"I hope I will fit in the control room." Blaziken fretted, bass voice halted as the translator strained to speak a human language. "There is more of me than most humans."

**I most certainly will not fit.** Piskerath mused, bending down to eye Gwen. **Is there any place a bit bigger in there?** The brown asked.

"uuuuuh, no sorry. There's no place for you to hide." Gwen eyed the brown nervously. Then clapped her hands over her mouth. "You said you were going to keep quiet."

**I did, you didn't.** The brown's eyes rippled in amusement.

"Wait, you can /hear/ him???" Five pairs of suspicious eyes focused on Gwen.

"Should I be? I mean Sa.... i mean Mori said that it should be Tosh, not me."

Sakura sighed. "I can tell you how that might have come about later."

Aoriya groaned. "Its extremely rare in the worlds beyond Pern, but it happens sometimes." She ran her hands through her black hair, trying to think. "Piskerath what do I do with you. I can't send you back to Pern. Without me you'd get stuck between."

**There is water not far from here.** Piskerath said hopefully. He bent down on eyelevel with Gwen. **What is your name Torchwood?** Piskerath rumbled, prodding Gwen experimentally.

"Aaah uuuuuh aaaaah..... Gwen, Gwen Cooper." Gwen stammered and fell backwards on her butt, looking rather frazzled.

**Gwen Cooper of Torchwood, your harbor, is it safe? Is it alright if I go swim in it?**

"Uuuuh uhmmm...... he wants to know if its okay to go swimming in the harbor oh lord." Gwen looked over at Aoriya for help, but the dragonrider simply looked expectantly at her. The next expression to cross her face showed that her day couldn't get any worse. "Why's he askin me?"

"It should be safe, just tell him to keep out of sight." Jack agreed. "And don't go too far." He added. "We can do crowd control for a dragon."

Aoriya eyed Gwen. "He's asking because you guys dont' have a watch dragon, and you can hear him. He'll go to you before any of the other members of your unit, go ahead, tell him." She crossed her hands over her chest expectantly. "If an emergency comes up you'll need to bespeak him." Piskerath eyed Gwen, crooning encouraingly.

"I don't know how." Gwen said helplessly. "I mean I just hear him. How do I even......."

Toshiko was more patient. "Think it, like if you're talking to yourself in your head. Think it....." She encouraged.

Gwen squared her shoulders. **Hello?** She tested. **Is this working?**

**Aye, it is Gwen Cooper......** Piskerath hummed, studying her closely. **You have it finally!**

**Jack says you can go swimming, but stay out of sight. Humans here don't know about dragons, so you have to keep from being seen.**

**I see, I understand. I will call if I am in danger. Gwen Cooper of Torchwood, if you need me ever, call, scream, whatever you can to get my attention.** **I will answer you as fast as I can.** Piskerath leapt into the sky, his pale brown form arrowing upwards in an arch before darting downwards into the ocean.

Byron was quiet the whole time, until Light bapped him upside the head. "Oye, introduce yourself goof."

"Okay Kira."

"Watch it bear boy."

"Oh next practice your ass is mine."

"I'll wipe the floor with your doll." Light pushed Byron forwards. "He's surly, don't mind him."

"I'm Byron, a Bount from Karakura. My doll has twin aspects, Aumbla and Danega." A tiny bit of snow fluttered through the air. "Me, that's me over here." The snowflake said in a melancholy voice as it dropped out of sight.

"And I'm Hinata Hyuuga!" Hinata bowed, then the instant her eyes landed on Jack she blushed. "Heiress to the Hyuuga clan. It's a pleasure to meet you!" Her face slowly turned red.

"Now that's odd. She's only done that for Naruto." Byron giggled. "You got yourself a new mark Hinata?"

"M..... m..... mark Byron?"

"Yeah, a blushmark!" Byron snickered. "A guy that every time you talk to him you turn red and if he gives you the time of day you faint."

Hinata's face red around the collar and the tips of her ears now. "I can't help it. I know when somebody has that spark. That's what drew me to Naruto. Someone who has the spark of inspiration, the ability to move men." Hinata said shyly.

So Jack decided to play with Hinata a bit. He leaned in and whispered. "Its the 51st century pheromones. The air is sweeter, makes people smell sexier. It lets me move a /lot/ of men."

"oh dear........" thump. "Lord." Groaned Edward. "Come here." He helped Hinata up, carefully shaking her awake. "If your stupid pheromones have the same effect as Naruto...... might want to watch it. I think you gave Hinata an overdose."

"I'm fine. Really!" Hinata jerked upright, then she hit her head on Edward's head and fainted again.

"OW!" Edward groaned. "OYE." He woke hinata gently. "Jeesh. Hinata you need to watch yourself."

"Come on, we should head down to the Hub, there's a confrence room in there." Jack groaned. "That's a lot to fit on a tile. We'll take them through the garage."

Sakura happily lead the way. "Raito, its good to see you again." She said cheerfully, following in his wake.

"Are you on crack, you hate me! You say that every time we meet."

"I hated human you Light. And this is me 500 years forwards. We've had a lot of time to share sake and commiserate on the good old days, and I like to think that you deserve a second chance. But no, what I was waiting for Light, was you /POST/ Kira, with Ryuuzaki back in your arms. I wanted you to learn a lesson or two. You know what they say, wisdom comes with age."

"Whatever, we're the same person so I don't see why you'd make a distinction."

"Why not? When a timelord regenrates /they/ start things over again. Why can't an Arrancar? Isn't that what you wanted when you and Ryuuzaki had the twins?"

"I thought I could change the world when I picked up a shinigami's notebook. Then I fall backwards in time and have to live through it again. Can I stop myself? No. Can I warn the man I love with my life? No. And sometimes at night I can still hear /him/ muttering names and causes of death in the dark. "I want to change the world" joyfull song for Kagome and her team, very very bitter and ironic song for me."

"Hmm, that reminds me, does Donna know that her personality will change?" Gwen asked. "I mean......"

"Probably not. She was kept in isolation from the rest of the strand. And doctor didn't regenerate in front of her. She's only known him as he is now." Sakura told her. "And the only time she had any experience with it was when Doctor healed his body, but didn't change form."

"That gigai fits you pretty well by the way." Edward told her. "Is your bust a few sizes bigger or is it just me?"

"urahara decided to be a pervert. But I prefer being blonde. Call me the third Sakura and hand me a screwdriver. You realize that /this/." She held up her arm to show the tattoo of the seal of Rassilon. "That was Urahara's idea."

"Yeah well. There were four you's actually. You before we met you, you when we met you, future you who comes back to save herself every so often, and the you here."

"Memories of the me before you met me have since sunk into oblivion. Doctor offered to help me get them back." Sakura said with a ruefull smile.

"Sorry about bringing Kira-kun here, I know how much you two don't get along. They were going to send Seto instead of Light, but he has a corporation to run, duels to fight, and he was made head jounin now that Pegasus retired. Too bad, summoners are good for assignments like this." Arina sighed. "And obviously nobody from Section 9 can go."

"I. AM. NOT. KIRA!" Light hissed. "I /was/ Kira, but the monster is gone. All that's left is a beaten and broken man who wants to have his happy ending."

Byron snorted, as the gear swung open. "Woo! Batcave!" he said intelligently. "Nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh.... HORK" Hitsugaya grabbed him by the collar and dragged him back into line with the others. "I can't believe they used /my/ DNA to make you. You're an asshole."

"You are the sacred beast of legend, you're special, Shiiiiiro-chan!" Byron snickered, pulling Hitsugaya into a mocking kiss. "Hey, if I kiss my clone, am I committing incest or something?"

"Real mature Byron." Martel had been silent for the most part. Then she supplied. "The bounts are humans cloned from shinigami DNA. However, their DNA is different from a normal humans. A bount lives forever, humans don't. Bounts also do not reproduce. Byron is the last of his kind as far as we know. The Bount die with him."

The white haired captain shrilled, pushing him away. "Turn around, go to Seto's world and call Yami Bakura that!"

"Nope, he'll cut my throat, you just turn down the thermastat." Byron smiled. "Besides, unlike Kariya, I don't have a death wish. I'm going to live forever and die watching the end of the universe." He said cockily.

Frost began to creep up the nearest pipe. Jack didn't notice. "The end of the universe is a nightmare, I promise you. But you can live forever with me. The worst kept secret in Torchwood, you're looking at him."

"If I'm still alive at the end of the universe, come to my place, we'll have sake and see how many positions we can do before we collapse." Sakura snickered at Jack and snorted back laughter.

"Oh trust me that's a date." Jack smirked, leering at Sakura. "Of course, my door is always open." The shinigami laughed. "What? I don't mind older women."

"Can't scare me, i'm as cold as they come." Byron giggled. "Hey, you aren't with that doggy boy from Gwen's team are you? I wouldn't mind a warm body warming my bed at night."

"He's pining over his lost Lucas." Katry was an Inu-tai yokai, a species called a Hellhound. But he was gentler than Inu-Yasha. Lucas was a fox spirit whom Katry fell in love with. Lucas disappeared, and poor Katry, loyal Inu that he is, was still pining. "But we were planning something special." Hitsugaya blushed.

"Er...... say Sakura's team, using Gwen's might cause a mixup. Since there's already a torchwood member called Gwen."

"Makes sense." Byron rolled his eyes. "Speaking of which, doesn't being thrown backwards in time knock you back to deputy?"

"Not even that, I don't have my old deputy badge." Sakura chuckled. "I'm back to being a substitute!"

"I can tell you're happy about that." Hinata blushed. "You never wanted a command rank anyway from what I've heard."

"The only reason why Yamamoto wanted me to be a captain was because I didn't seek power. I saught the strength to defend. And in doing so I became the ideal Shinigami Captain. But at the same time every year took a piece of my soul away. I was giving of myself over and over and never getting anything back. Jack whatever you do, don't get married to your job, you'll end up like me. A slut with 30 kids, a massive fortune, and a resume so long you have Timelords learning about you in school."

"Ouch." Jack laughed. "I'll keep that in mind. Fortune though, how'd you bring that about?"

"When ZP and Major died, they took a part of my soul with me. And then when I died I had the outlet for that grief. I trained and I trained. But I....... I saw the afterlife. The soul society as it is in this era is split drastically along classlines. The shinigami in their ivory tower and the common folk in the rukongai down below. I knew my friends, my loved ones, would have to die and end up in that mess. The first through fourth districts are pretty good, but the eightieth district of the Rukongai may as well be hell. I had five hundred years of spare time and my rank of Captain gave me certain perks. I used those perks to try and erase the class line. That resulted in my family being elevated to Nobility and me being filthy rich. Most of it goes back into the community though. Beyond what I need I pass most of it to where its needed. Why shouldn't I?"

"Wow, I didn't think you were that famous." Jack grinned. "By the way, if Rose's future self was the one who contacted Soul Society, what's letting her stay?"

"aaah, well...... i wrote a communications program for the Tardis. It acts as a conduit for information and energy. Rose can stay because her past self is stuck in the alternate dimension, which shields her. And if she needs backup, she can simply phone home. My guess is that she's in the shadows somewhere, probably in and out of Urahara's or the Vaizard compound. More than likely she's keeping an eye on things, ready to call the cavelry if something goes wrong."

"you actually /wrote/ a program for the Tardis???????" Jack demanded. "Doctor never lets me touch anything."

"When I was alive I was a powerful and practicing Technopath. Its the ability to control a computer with your mind. Some of that stuck. I had Seiryuu, the dragon of wisdom coursing through my soul when I was still learning. Because of that I have an instinct for machines and how to work with them. Add to that that the Tardis is a telepathic ship, she sings.... she humms. And shinigami are mildly telepathic in general, unlike the lot of you, I can hear what Doctor says to her."

"Good to see you haven't lost your touch, I'll bet Toshiko could use an assistant." Byron eyed the technician and Owen sidelong.

"And that's all you're going to say on that matter. Do you hear me?" Ed scolded.

It was common knowledge that the gatekeeper dimension known as the Inter had tv shows and books and manga of all the other universes. The Torchwood series two finale had ended with Toshiko and Owen dead when Grey had set explosions throughout the city. Including the nuclear plant. But the gatekeeper version of events typically went differently, because the authors and directors of the inter had forgotten to take into account the other dimensions. Even if whoever wrote the screenplays for Doctor Who and Torchwood had known about the other worlds, human copywrite laws prevented him from including them. Hitsugaya and Byron's response to a potential nuclear meltdown wouldn't be to try and switch cooling systems back on. They'd simply cover the plant or relevant parts of it in ice and stop it that way and if Hitsugaya wasn't enough they'd call Rukia to help.

As for the weevils summoned by Grey? They were afraid of dead things. Light would simply use ressurecion to become a hollow again and either tear them up or herd them back towards the hub where they belonged. Captain John? No trouble at all for an alchemist that only has to clap his hands and smack them against the wall to create a bullet proof shield. Hinata is more than capable of detecting explosives. And the rest was a mix of brawn and cleverly used gatekeeper techniques.

"I still have the limiter on my body. That's a difficult mark to explain if another shinigami sees it." Sakura sighed in despair.

"Limiter?" Owen asked. "What kind of limiter?"

"Shinigami Captains and Lieutenants can shake the earth if they wanted to with their power. Sakura only has to snap and she could have you paralyzed on the ground, completely. If I wanted to I could make it snow inside the hub, just by thinking about it. And Captain Zaraki is so powerful that he can topple a building with a single swipe of his katana. In order to minimize the mess that a command rank shinigami can make, a limiter is put on our spiritual pressure when we leave for the world of the living. This ensures that collateral damage will be kept to a minimum." Hitsugaya replied calmly. "Sakura, the program you wrote for the Tardis ensures that it stays on. If you hadn't modified the doctor's communications systems the limiter would simply have dissolved when you entered the past. Is this the conference room Harkness-taichou."

"Jack, just Jack." Jack corrected. "And yes, please sit."

"I prefer to use formalities for the time being." Hitsugaya said stiffly. "Though my teammates might not care." The group gathered, the gatekeepers on one side, and Sakura and Torchwood on the other. "Alright, I've brought data on gatekeepers, basic rules about how we operate. Sakura, Byron, I'm sure I don't have to remind you about the rules of the Inter. You may say that there are stories of Torchwood and Timelords, but you may not say what those stories contain. Am I clear?"

"There are stories about us? What kind of stories?" Ianto asked, his curiousity piqued.

Sakura pulled out her comm crystal and squeezed, a hologram of a long long multistranded rope appeared. "The multiverse, called the Strand. Many, many, many dimensions. Yours is here, Soul Society/Hueco Mundo/Karakura is here. Konohagakure is here. Shinigami Realm and Kira Daemon Tokyo is here. Pern is here. Pokemon earth there. Amestris. Aaaand, Inter Earth."

In the exact center of the muliverse, a single world was showing as a massive massive core to everything else. "Because its centric to the multiverse, those in the Inter with qualities we call the Sight or the Poetic Tongue or maybe just plain old lowlevel clairvoyance can pick up the goings on elsewhere in the stand. They write them, they paint them, and in recent days they write manga and screenplays and novels. We have stories of Torchwood because some clever joe or jane somewhere far away picked up what was going on here, and wrote it down."

"But that's..... its........" Ianto sputtered.

"Oh yeah, the actor who played Jack doesn't do the real thing justice." Sakura joked, batting her eyes dangerously at Jack. "But the stories typically don't depict more than personalities or how things work. The reason being is that modern human beings have kinda....... tuned out, most of the rest of the universe. One person might resonate with this world, another with Ed and Martel's another with Hinata's or Arinas. They can't see the whole picture. Its kinda like being colorblind."

"So how do you get something like..... that diagram right there." Gwen eyed Sakura curiously. "You're from the Inter aren't you?"

"A long time ago. A ten year old little girl screamed when her father was lost, and her power began to flow. Five years later an anguished young woman saught escape from monotany, and disappeared without a trace into the strand. Two years later that young woman loved and lost bitterly, covering her pain in ink. A few months later, she fell in love again and became a mother and lost her humanity at the same time, becoming a goddess of death and a knight of the dragon's will."

"Because of the gods." Martel said with an odd little smile. "Gatekeepers are reincarnated gods and goddesses, forced to take mortal form because of a cataclysm a long time ago. But they discovered that not all of them could be reincarnated. The only ones to remain sacrificed their physical existance, they became one with creation, literally. Their will to defend it supported a multiverse as it grew and strengthened. The only problem is, they can't affect the physical world. Oh they can tell us something, but any visible form they take is an illusion. Kinda like the burning bush. I guess. An illusion that appears real, very real. But thanks to their sacrifice and the sacrifices of gatekeepers past we have maps like this."

Blaziken growled, **A gatekeeper is fully whatever species they are. Saaakura, Martha has been quiet through all of this. A crystal, give her a crystal.**

Sakura frowned, then blinked. "Oh dear, yes I should remember that!" She tossed a tiny object to Martha. "CATCH!"

Martha squeaked, fumbling with the crystal, which burst into brilliant gold light before turning a luminous gold with a Sign in it. When Martha held up the crystal to inspect it, the symbol was visible. Blaziken growled in amusement. **rrmmmg, Aries the Ram, Zodiac level Gatekeeper.**

"WHAT? Me? Wait, why me?" Martha sputtered as the others turned to look at her. "Don't look at me, I don't know anything."

"And she wouldn't." Edward chuckled. "A gatekeeper is fully whatever their species is. They just don't..... belong. I guess that's the best way to put it. Gatekeepers, good ones, typically stand out in some fashion or another mentally or physically or emotionally before they're tapped. I'm a good example, I showed unusual talent in Alchemy when I was only six. I don't think I ever really fit in with anyone else besides my brother Alphonse and Winry. Well, and Roy and Riza and Havoc and Falman and Breda and...... okay I do fit in someplaces, not the point."

Arina chuckled. "This group is full of surprises."

**Indeed.**

"But why, what, how......" Martha sputtered. "I don't understand, what happens now?"

"Now we keep an eye on you." Light chuckled. "We send to our superiors what we think of you gatekeeper wise, and if we like you, then we tap you. You get a key like ours. It opens the barrier between worlds without leaving a scratch. Kinda like slipping into a house through the window when you lock yourself out." Light grinned.

"When did future martha get her key?" Asked Gwen.

"Dunno. She had a white sash, genin, but the stripes on it suggested she'd been swinging for a little while." Sakura added. "I've heard of immortal keepers staying genin for decades. When you've got years of afterlife ahead of you you don't have very much motivation. All the time in the world to work on that green sash, and the blue one. The stripes just mean that you've done something to earn them, a battle well fought, a difficult technique learned. Hell, future Martha had just graduated the academy and she was capable of shikai. Her 5 Part Wish technique knocked me for a loop. And Rose..... ho boy, future Rose managed a bakudo 61, without the incantation and a Hado 63 as well. And she'd asked Yoruichi to teach her shunko. Those are serious techniques."

"Five part wish sounds lame." Owen snarked. "Didn't she come up with anything cooler?"

"Doesn't work that way Owen, a zanpakuto's techniques come out of the subconscious mind, they appear as they will and for some reason they always suit the user perfectly. The 5 Part wish technique symbolizes the people most important to her and her will to protect them. And there was nothing lame about it. I was pounding away on her defenses and with that attack Future Martha shrugged me off like it was nothing. I was giving her a handicap in that match too."

"I'M RIGHT HERE!" Martha growled.

"How does the whole zanpakuto thing work though. How do they make them, shape them, control them?" Toshiko asked.

Hitsugaya grinned. "Hyorinmaru is an exception because he's a holy beast, but the zanpakuto is the manifestation of its owners subconcious mind. Its........."

"its a right that only the most powerful shinigami learn. When you're ready, your zanpakuto appears to you, kind of a dream walk sort of thing. When it decides you're ready for the power, it tells you its name. Saeyamaru came to me in a dream, but the zanpakuto have a...... oh hell let me show you." She grinned. "Oye, Saeyamaru, come out darling."

Saeyamaru squealed. "SAKU-CHAAAAAN!" A six year old knight's page leapt out of thin air and clung to Sakura. "I'm little again! I'm so hap......... uh oh.........." Saeyamaru began to glow white, then grew. The knight that grew in his place was half dragon, wearing armor carved from living jewels. He carried a chinese dao made from pure silver, crusted with topazuline stones that no scanner could identify. "i'm sorry Sakura, my body has been unstable of late. I've been flip flopping between child and paladin."

"Everybody, meet Saeyamaru. My zanpakuto spirit. An accomplished shinigami can make their zanpakuto spirit appear for a few minutes." Sakura sighed, looking up at the zanpakuto spirit. "Its alright Saeyamaru. Do what you can."

"you're inner child is suffering Sakura. That is the reason for my instability. You are between hope and grief. Because of this I cannot stay long." He reached out, a gloved and armored hand stroking the shinigami's hair. "Harkness, Martha, you make her happy..... take care of my Sa..........." And he disappeared, simply dissolved.

Light began to snicker. "Somebody has a cruuuuuushhhhh!"

"You me and Martha in a three way. I'm getting really bad mental images." Jack shook his head. "You are........"

"HE DIDNT MEAN THAT KIND OF HAPPINESS!" Hinata snapped, face flushing furiously in embarassment at speaking up. "I've seen Sakura as Gwen, she was filled with anguish and sorrow and despair and terror. She was stuck in a place she wanted so desperately to get out of, wanted so bad to live life as a normal gatekeeper. The only two people she loved she knew she'd only love for a little while, and then she'd have to live centuries without them and that's terrifying to her. As time goes on she just gets sadder and sadder because she knows that everything she loves is going to disappear any minute. The look in her eyes. I saw it when she looked at you. She was happy, you gave her hope."

"i'm right here you know." Sakura told Hinata.

"I know." The Hyuuga beamed. "I've been practicing my cold reading skills." She said cheerfully. "I don't plan on using them like Neji though. I'm considering going for my counciling certification." Hinata blushed.

"Well good on you." Owen looked like he was getting impatient. "Anything else..... pressing besides shinigami dropping out of the sky?"

Hitsugaya frowned. "Not much no. Though Aoriya did bring some stuff for Torchwood. Kind of a goodwill gift."

"Actually Sakura, your past self is competing in the Grand Festival next week. Wanna watch it?" Arina smirked as she interjected. "I'm a technopath too remember? I'll set up a monitor for you."

"Do charizard breathe fire?" Sakura laughed. "Its not often you get to watch yourself, and I can't exactly get Aoriya to time it."

"Damn right you can't! If you have an emergency, these can find any gatekeeper anywhere, as long as they know what the person looks like." Aoriya pulled out a tiny leather bag. "Its an invention of Yamaki's, it keeps firelizard eggs warm for long trips. But you /might/ want to put them in an incubator." She carefully opened the bag. "One for Jack, one for Gwen and now that he's alive again one for Owen. The fourth is for Sakura. Sorry dear but firelizards /are/ identifiable. Even if you rebanded him with Torchwood's colors Mancha would still be recognizable. He should be coming, Piskerath is giving him directions, he had trouble figuring out where you'd gone. Firelizards can time small distances, but not fivehundred turns, oh excuse me, years."

"We get......... one of those things?" Owen's eyes turned huge, a dear in headlights expression on his face.

"Of course, the leader, the second in command and the medic are usually the first in a gatekeeper unit to get firelizards, usually get the cream of the crop too. Its a matter of practicality." Arina explained. "The medic must be in contact with his unit at all times, and has to have stronger defenses than any of the other teammembers. Why? you do it any differently?"

"Their structure is a little more like Section 9's, just much smaller." Explained Sakura. "Still, its a good strategy."

Aoriya sighed. "Well, if you don't want the firelizard Owen you could always give him to Ianto." Ianto smirked, waggling his eyebrows teasingly at Owen. "You couldn't have impressed one while you were dead, it would have gone wild instead."

"oh come on Owen, you could use a pet. Besides, Ianto has the pterodactyl and Lilly." Toshiko teased, beaming at Owen. "Besides, the firelizard is cooler. If you don't want it I'll take it, I think they're cute."

Owen's face twitched. "That is........ the most blatent attempt at manipulation I have EVER seen." Owen sighed. "Oh fine, I'll take the stupid egg."

"The biggest one goes to Jack, we think that one is a queen, and the leader must have a reliable firelizard. The other three we think are bronzes or browns, but aside from the queen eggs we have no real way of telling. They need to be kept warm."

"I've run enough firelizard hatchings to know what to teach them." Sakura grinned. "Did you bring anything else?"

"Numbweed, fellis, but I thought that bringing klah would be an insult on Ianto's culinary prowess." Aoriya yawned. "you terrans with your coffee, I just don't understand it. The stuff is so....... bitter. Ick."

Sakura sighed, looking anywhere but at her fellow gatekeepers. "I have one more...... request from you guys." She said quietly.

"What is it?" Hitsugaya asked, as Jack's head swiveled to look at Sakura.

"Please, tell nobody connected with my old life that I'm here. I don't want.... to see Section 9 either. Please try to keep them away." She turned to look at Jack. "If anyone from Section 9 appears, please use my alias. I lost my technopathy, my dragon, my Major and my life. I want them to remember me as their little Gwennie, chief's child, dragon knight. I don't want them to see the....... ghost of their loved one."

Gwen fumed, Martha sputtered. "WHY?" She demanded.

"Martha.... leave it." Jack warned.

Sakura sighed, but Hitsugaya shook his head. "Martha, leave it. Don't you realize, to see the people she knew, that she shared her life with, her soul with, and yet not have that bond? It would burn her up to see Major or ZP again. Delphine already knows, but she won't show up. In doctor's absence Setsuna will be taking future Rose, and if she needs to future Martha back and forth in time. Oh, and you might want to keep an eye out, Haruko is doing the tapping and escort of your incoming Genin."

"oh good lord." Edward shoved his face in his hands.

"Who is this Haruko?" Martel asked, speaking up for the first time.

"She's a psychotic alien who really just loves having fun. But if anything she's more of a flirt than Jack, and absolutely ridiculous! She's also very much the fussy big sister sort. Look for a pink haired lady on a Vespa and carrying a vintage 4001 model Rickenbocker bass guitar." Edward sighed. "When I met her she grabbed me and wouldn't let go. Odds are she'll enjoy tormenting Owen and Gwen. Anybody she thinks of as stuffy and boring she'll tease to death."

"Trouble?" Ianto asked, giggling. "That doesn't sound so bad."

"Haruko is more than a crazy alien riding a scooter. In her world she's an investigator for the Galactic Space Police Brotherhood. The case that made her career was when she dragged a human boy named Naota into her search for a space pirate called Atomsk."

Toshiko blink, blink, blinked. "OH MY GOD I SAW THAT ONE!!!!!!!!!!" She sputtered. "The........ the girl on a Vespa, the boy with the things coming out of his head...... THAT Haruko? Oh. my. god." She looked like she was going to fall over. "Lets just hope she doesn't hit anybody with that scooter!" Toshiko giggled.

"I never got to meet her." Sakura admitted. "I hear she's awesome though."

"Haruko is a wanderer, she turned down a position on the shield council. And it really means something if they'll let her walk away from that one." Byron added.

"Is she going to bring Canti with her?" Asked Toshiko hopefully. "I always wondered what makes him tick."

"No, she has a crystal to call Canti if she needs him." Hitsugaya sighed. "In the meantime Naota needs him. Which reminds me. Here you go." He handed Sakura a chain of crystals. "Me, Ed, Arina, Hinata and Light."

"Thanks."

"What are those?" Martha asked, peering at the chain.

"Summoning crystals. You use them to call for help, I simply hold up the point and call "Vocare" and the name of the person who owns the crystal. If they're carying their reciever crystal with them they'll be automatically teleported to your location. They're only used in the most dire emergencies." Light explained. "And please, keep me away from Haruko. She gets on my nerves. I told her to keep from exciting Ryuk, instead? She buys him a whole bushel of apples."

"Don't worry, if I can control John I can handle Haruko." Jack snorted. "How do these apprentice drop offs normally go?"

"it depends. If there is a serious danger to the would be gatekeepers life the order is to tap on sight. In which case the spell acts as an ambulence, resembling a golden meteor streaking through the sky. It was made to be found on purpose because the person inside is in danger of death if they don't get medical attention immediately. If its simply a matter of whisking a person away, two gatekeepers stand on either end of the transfer. One follows the genin to be and waits for the signal to spring. The other is waiting on their destination world, they come a few hours ahead of time, then at the right time they give the signal to tap. Since Sakura is here, Haruko will likely hang around for a day or so, probably at Cardiff House. Just to make sure everything's alright with our newbie. But then she leaves and Sakura gets charge of him as her sensei. He's just a child, still too young to see active duty." Light explained. "Haruko isn't the good mother kind. Sakura has both raised children, and as a member of Torchwood she has better access to resources and the strongest possible protection here as part of the main group."

"She knows it too." Hitsugaya added. "Haruko may seem eccentric but she's

"Alright, so we have firelizard eggs hatching in...."

"Probably 48 hours." Aoriya supplied.

"And a new tap and crazy alien detective coming in one week." Jack grinned. "Haruko won't be staying long will she?"

"Probably not, she's like a feather adrift in the stars." Edward grinned. "Can't stay in one place for very long. But I think that's it for us, anything you want to bring us up to date on?"

"Here....." Toshiko offered them a small flashdrive. "A readers digest version of what's happened in the history of the current team. Really interesting."

"We have some information. Inter stuff." Arina huffed. "Though some of it we can't share."

"You mean like the knowledge of the future you mentioned?" Gwen asked, blinking in surprise.

"Unfortunately yes. There's a lot of things we can't tell you, for your own and your world's safety. Sakura will be given orders about what to and not to act on and what she should do. Jack when the time comes you'll just have to trust her."

Sakura watched the look on the Torchwood team's face, all five of their faces, plus Martha, registered worry, irritation, Owen blanched, Gwen looked flustered.

Jack watched Sakura's gaze as it fell on them one by one. Martha, Gwen, Ianto, but her eyes rested longest on Toshiko and Owen. "Well, I'm sure whatever it is we can handle it. We have the home field advantage. I think we can call this a night."

* * *

_O mother dear Look what you've done _

_To your forlorn and once beloved son _

_Why was I born at all?  
_

_O mother dear I'm such a freak _

_A mutant man, a woman underneath _

_Why was I born at all?_

The shinobi, ANBU mask on, plunged through the halls of Shield Station with Kagome. He was accompanied by a massive black dog, and Inu-Yasha and Miroku were right behind them. The ninken had his nose to the ground, following the scent of a genin that the four of them hoped wouldn't be dead by the time they got there. "I can't believe we missed it. The name Borro is derived from the name of the Timelord Borusa, he was a corrupt high level official that was later turned to stone when he tried to get the secrets of Rassilon from his tomb. The Master and Doctor were both there! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!"

"That can't be good." Kagome fretted.

"no it can't, our spy just became the most wanted man on Shield Station." The ANBU replied.

_It's you I blame for all the shame _

_This anguish and this aching _

_The mirror turned against the wall _

_Myself despised, forsaken _

_You say, "Beauty is within us, your mother knows"_

_"There's a beauty that's within us, just like a rose"  
You say, "Beauty is within us, so let it grow"  
But it's grown so dark and ugly_

"But why the watch? Why does he want the watch?" Inu-Yasha demanded. "He's Kagome's apprentice as well as yours she has a right to know."

"Kenri's prior incarnation, is the Timelord known as the Master. He's the only one that can open the safe where the watch is hidden. The Master is a man that defied the laws of physics, space and time, and almost brought the End of the World to fruition. His misdeeds are said to be without number and his villainy is as deep as an abyss into nothingness. The watch contains the Master's memories. All the information within could be devestating if our mysterious traitor gets his hands on it. I can't believe I was so stupid." He shook his head. "i'm no Iruka. No Kakashi. I didn't see the warning signs."

"Kenri is a yokai and a jinchuriki, he should be able to handle a lowly grunt." Kagome assured the others. "Shouldn't he?"

"I doubt it." The nindog running with them replied. "They treated him pretty nasty even before he was tapped. he was brought up on the station. Treated like crap and cooped up here all his life. He'll be psychologically vulnerable if that watch is opened."

"Do you smell him Mugenomaru?"

"Yeah, this way!"

"I smell him too, and I smell blood." Inu-yasha quickened his pace.

_O mother dear I curse you so _

_For breathing life into your wretched son _

_Why were you born at all?  
O mother dear I love you so _

_O please forgive this anger in my soul _

_Without you I'm alone_

"We can blame ourselves when we have him in custody." Miroku told the ANBU. "Right now we need to rescue your apprentice." The monk concentrated on the corridors, counting them. "This is it. Rem said it was kept in here."

They turned into the storage archives, "oh god............... no no no........"

The scene was grim, the spy and assailent of genin Kenri, a young teacher much loved and trusted on Shield Station who went by the alias Borro was flat on the ground, dead. He bled out from clawmarks to the neck and femoral artery. Sand was scattered everywhere, shifting and sifting back and forth, writhing in the blood as it assimilated the iron in the homoglobin to become more sand. "I thought Gaara was the sand jinchu." Miroku frowned.

"When the akatsuki extracted Shukaku, Itachi managed to get Kenri in to attach him." the ANBU checked their spy. "DAMN! He's dead. I wanted to have Lelouche work him over. We could have found something useful for our case."

"You gave the reincarnation of the Master Shukaku? The one tail?" Kagome's eyes went huge. "That's......... not a good choice is it?"

"Stupid I know. I wasn't the one given the order. Mugenomaru, Inu-yasha, can you smell him?"

Miroku called out. "The safe containing the watch has been broken open. Looks like clawmarks tore the door off."

It's me who's been eternally damned Trapped inside this cage, a ruined man All damaged and depraved

Inu-Yasha put his nose to the ground and sniffed. "THIS WAY!" Mugenomaru howled, following the inu-yokai through shelves of boxes and safes and sacks of all kinds of old junk.

Sand was whirling around the black haired figure, lashing out at anything that came close to it. The boy was curled up in ball, the watch dangling from his bloodstained claws, wide open and ticking loudly. A pair of golden eyes were huge and blank, staring at nothing, registering nothing. He was trembling like a leaf, shaking from shellshock. "No...... never I never...... did those things...... what am I doing......... stop it.......... stop it........ stop it....... the drums, they're going to make me deaf.......... stop........."

"Kenri?"

Nothing. No response.

"Kenri?" The ANBU pressed, approaching the boy cautiously.

That reaction wasn't good. It was said that the beat of drums was what drove the Master to end the world. And all the evidence appeared in favor of the dead traitor rather than the living genin. Kenri had been treated as a monster from the day of his birth, because everyone else knew he was the reincarnation of Master. It was something that echoed the treatment that Naruto had recieved growing up. It was treatment that might make this situation even worse than it might have appeared to an outsider.

_O mother dear _

_This misery _

_Has settled like a stain upon my skin -a vast unspoken sin_

The sand began to tear at the ANBU, but he didn't care. It forced Kagome and Miroku back, but the sands seemed to recognize who was approaching, and parted to let the ANBU, Inu-yasha and Mugenomaru back. Mugenomaru whined, nuzzling the young yokai delicately. Kenri leaned vacently into the ninken, face terrifyingly white and blank. "He responds to dogs Inu-yasha, see how he'll do with a fellow yokai."

Inu-yasha nodded, snuggling in from the other side and nuzzling the little one. Kenri reached out and yanked the older yokai to him, whimpering and retreating into the warmth of Mugenomaru's thick black coat. "I can smell the fear on him." Inu-yasha shivered. "He's terrified."

"I know........ but the people of the station might not see it that way. Naruto is away, can't send him to him for some cheering up. Inu-yasha, would you mind taking him to Kaede's for a bit? Kagome could take over his training for a couple of months until things have died down here." The ANBU reached out to gently touch the youth, praying the sand wouldn't tear his hand off. Instead the normally piercing grains twisted over his arm, lightly ghosting over the flesh, whispering in anguish. "I can smell his pain too." The ANBU sighed. "Poor thing. Kenri........."

No response, the boy was still mouthing 'stop it stop it' over and over in terror.

"Kenri!"

_And my mistake is much too late _

_But your mistake was trusting _

_That out of grief, a goodness comes _

_And love comes out of lusting_

The boy suddenly lunged for the ANBU, throwing his arms around him and shaking, pulling him into his grip with Inu-yasha and Mugenomaru. It was then, and only then, did Kenri finally snap out of the trance he'd been in. "NOHRI SENSEI!" Bawled the young yokai. "Its horrible....... its terrifying.......... the drums...... stop the drums........." He trembled violently, sobbing into the ANBU's shoulder. "Please.......... make them stop! I'm gonna go deaf! Even Shukaku-kun is scared."

"I'm so sorry Kenri. I'm so sorry. I should have come sooner." The ANBU crooned.

_You say, "Beauty is within us, your mother knows"  
"There's a beauty that's within us, just like a rose"  
You say, "Beauty is within us, so let it grow"  
But it's grown so dark I can not see you anymore_

"he wanted the watch. He wanted what was inside. He was gonna hurt the other gatekeepers with it. I felt the demonic aura in it. I knew he couldn't get it! The only thing I could..... think of to stop him from getting it was to open it up, and maybe what was inside would escape and be too damaged to use." The yokai whimpered in terror. His face was white, ears flattened against his head.

"I failed you Kenri..... i'm so sorry..... i failed you as a sensei. Are you mad at me."

"No.......... it hurts so much........ nohri-sensei please." The young Yokai wrapped his arms around the ANBU, tail sagging between his legs. "Don't let go......."

"I won't. I promise. But we have to get you out of here. I'll carry you."

_"O beauty is within us, mother knows"  
"O beauty is within us, like a rose"  
"O beauty is within us, let it grow"  
O mother dear, let me out of here!_

As the ANBU stood, his mask fell off, revealing a canid face typical of the Inuzuka clan. His mane of black hair was clipped short on the sides, so that it stood out in back even more. There was a patch on the back of his uniform that said "Kiss" in Japanese, but those were the only changes made to a uniform as grey and black as the shadows now cast on the little one's soul.

"I'm so sorry, Kenri." Kagome whispered quietly as the two fled to the infirmary, and as soon as they could medically leave, flee to Kagome's world of demons and spirits and swords and spells. The world of fuedal japan where the gatekeeper genin could run forever from the drums that tormented his head and tore at his soul.

_You say, "Beauty is within us, your mother knows"  
"There's a beauty that's within us, just like a rose"  
You say, "Beauty is within us, so let it grow"  
But it's grown so dark I can not see you anymore_

Next chapter!

A girl in a japanese school uniform with long black hair ran in front of the SUV. "OWEN THE BRAKES!" Cried Gwen in alarm.

"Kagome Higurashi! Gatekeeper! You're Torchwood right? I need your help!"

Gwen rolled down the window as three more figures ran over the horizon, a massive black dog the size of a motorcycle following them. "What's happened?"

"The demon dog! He's my apprentice Kenri!"

"That boy is the reincarnation of the Master. He was tricked into opening the watch that had Master's memories in it. He's not in his right mind!" Kagome pleaded.

The fae dog yowled, leaping at Martha, fangs bared for the kill. "DIE MARTHA JONES!"

"MARTHA THE NECKLACE! QUICK!" Kagome cried in alarm.

"SIT BOY!"

* * *


End file.
